"RBS could fail due to ‘£100bn black hole’ - with British taxpayers in line to lose their entire £45bn stake" (RBS)
From the Independent:
British taxpayers risk losing their entire £45bn stake in Royal Bank
of Scotland (RBS) which is in grave danger of failing within 10 years,
according to an explosive new book.
A new study of the disgraced bank, which brought the UK to the brink
of financial ruin, reveals RBS still has a £100bn “black hole” in its
finances due to “five broad areas of alleged criminality and
wrongdoing”.
They include the mis-selling of financial products
such as payment protection insurance, the alleged duping of investors
who were persuaded to plough more than £12bn into RBS shares just before
the banking crash in 2008, further fallout from the Libor scandal, and
current criminal investigations into the manipulation of the £3trn-a-day
foreign exchange markets.
Shredded: Inside RBS, The Bank That
Broke Britain, by the financial journalist Ian Fraser, concludes that
the governments led by Gordon Brown and David Cameron have “let the
people of Britain down” by failing to reform RBS after it received its
mammoth bailout under the stewardship of former chief executive Fred
“The Shred” Goodwin.
“The result has been that, at the time of writing, RBS is probably a
worse bank than it was under Fred Goodwin,” Fraser said. “If the right
moves are now made, RBS could become a great bank again. If they’re not,
I doubt it will even exist in 10 years’ time.
“Whatever happens,
it now seems impossible that British taxpayers will ever see a return on
their £45.5bn investment in the bank,” he writes in the book....MORE
HT:
naked capitalism
