RBS posted a huge loss today – a pre-tax loss of £5.17bn.
Operating profits were in fact up: £3.46bn in 2012, up from £1.82bn the previous year, the highest since its bail-out in 2008 – but charges from 2012’s smorgasboard of scandals brought that right down.
The news came just as EU officials agreed to put a cap on bankers bonuses as early as next year – bad news all round for RBS.
Speaking on the Today programme this morning, RBS boss Stephen Hester said that bankers pay “needs to be in line with contribution.”
He said: “I don’t think bankers should be treated as special creatures.”
“The most important thing for business certainty is a level playing field… As we know the financial crisis was a period of excess in many areas…that’s what we’re cleaning up for now.”
The clean-up is not RBS’s only problem though. As the government has a large stake in it you get the impression RBS isn’t quite sure what its priorities should be: should it play to the commercial interests of its minority share-holders, or invest in small businesses, as the government is pressing it to do? There seems to be a lack of communication between government and bank, and in the BBC interview today Hester was clearly champing at the bit for a sell-off.
“We are doing everything we can to facilitate a sale”, he said. “I think that RBS will be ready to be privatised in the next couple years. It will be ready to sell by 2015”.
“Privatisation is coming further into the agenda of the government and we welcome that.”
It will be up to the government to decide the date of the sell-off though – likely to be another point of contention between government and bank.
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