"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