21st Oct 2013 07:11
LONDON (Alliance News) - Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC is to be broken up by the UK government into a "good bank" and a "bad bank" with the go-ahead to be given within the next few weeks, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne told The Telegraph.
Osborne told the paper that the future of RBS was his "priority for the next two or three weeks" and there was no chance the bank could be left in its current form.
"We are now looking actively at a retail offer for the next tranche of Lloyds shares," he said. "With RBS we are not, at the moment, close to the stage of being able to sell RBS shares."
The Government is understood to be weighing up three potential models for dealing with the "toxic assets" of RBS, the Telegraph says. The first would to set up a bad bank inside RBS that would be run by an independent team. Alternatively, the advisers have suggested copying the model used by Swiss bank UBS which also created a separate bad bank, but with the support of the country's central bank. A third option would be to establish an entirely separate taxpayer-backed bad bank into which RBS's toxic assets could be placed, along the lines of the method used by the Swedish government in the 1990s.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/10390168/RBS-bad-bank-due-in-weeks-says-George-Osborne.html
By Steve McGrath; [email protected]; @SteveMcGrath1
Copyright 2013 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Related Shares:
RBS.L