Royal Bank of Scotland

The Courage to Act, or Not

Some of us have plenty of time to read good books while under lockdown rules. Here’s one I have been reading. It’s a memoir by Ben Bernanke, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve under the title “The Courage to Act”. It covers the major worldwide financial crisis of 2007/8 created by the defaults in sub-prime mortgages. The book includes a very good section on how that came about and how packaging up such mortgages eventually led to a complete lack of ...

RBS and Shareholder Committees

As readers may be aware, ShareSoc have requisitioned a resolution for the Royal Bank of Scotland's (RBS) Annual General Meeting requiring a Shareholder Committee be appointed. Do they need one? The directors of RBS clearly think not. For those readers who do live or work in London, you may find an article published yesterday (15/2/2017) in the London Evening Standard giving an overview of the major UK banks revealing. The article was written by Simon English and was headlined "End of the ...

RBS Rejects Democracy

ShareSoc has today issued the following press release: The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has rejected a requisition to implement a Shareholder Committee. ShareSoc will not permit this unreasonable...

New Year Resolutions? How About a New Resolution at RBS?

One of ShareSoc's recent initiatives has been the promotion of the concept of Shareholder Committees as a way of improving corporate governance in public companies. To pursue this agenda we have today submitted a requisition for a resolution to be added to the Annual General Meeting of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). A summary of what it said is given below (the full press release is here: https://www.sharesoc.org/pr85-rbs-shareholder-committee.html ): RBS Shareholders Demand Shareholder Committee (A joint press release on behalf of Private ...

Campaign to Obtain Shareholder Committee at RBS

This note has been issued by ShareSoc to its Members (but anyone can join in to support the campaign): ShareSoc has advocated the implementation of Shareholder Committees since our...

RBS Settlement Announced – But Why Has the FCA Done Nothing?

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) have announced a settlement of the litigation over the rights issue in 2008 with three out of the five investor groups who were pursuing the company. They have reserved £800 million to settle all the claims and are continuing to negotiate with the remaining litigants. But private investors may be reluctant to settle because of the high legal costs that will erode any settlement, the low value of the settlement (the claims were originally estimated ...

RBS and Pre-Packs

The FT carried a story on Saturday (11/6/2016) which was a blast from the past. It reported that Neil Mitchell, a former CEO of Torex Retail, had filed a claim in the high court against Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Cerberus and KPMG in relation to the sale of the company at the time it went into Administration. This case goes back to 2007 when Torex Retail got into financial difficulties after some fraudulent accounting came to light (which resulted in subsequent ...

Goodwin still on the hook for RBS debacle

The Herald newspaper have reported an astonishing attempt by the lawyers for Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to have Fred Goodwin excluded from the legal case over the rights issue in 2008. They wanted four former directors removed from the case so as to streamline proceedings. However the judge presiding over the case threw this attempt out. The directors signed off the prospectus and hence should surely be accountable for what the plaintiffs claim was a misleading document. But the lawyer for ...

Enormous Costs of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Legal Action

There was an interesting article by Geoff Ho in the Sunday Express yesterday (31/5/2015) on the law suit being pursued by shareholders against RBS. He reports that the RBoS Shareholders Action Group was presented with a bill for £1.2 million by its former solicitors Bird & Bird and a demand for "prompt payment" after they changed lawyers to Fladgate following concerns over costs and communication. Indeed the original demand was even higher but was subsequently reduced.  Fladgate are working on a ...