Banks rows - Kate Green MP outs £400 million "profit" by RBS's GRG
It struck Betaville while looking over the the coverage of last week's parliamentary debate on Royal Bank of Scotland's GRG unit that the mainstream press didn't pick up on Kate Green's comments about RBS making £400 million of profit from just one area of misconduct by the controversial unit.
Kate Green, MP for Stretford and Urmston, was speaking on behalf of her constituent Property Alliance Group and was referencing profits made by RBS on the equity stakes the bank had taken in struggling businesses via the Strategic Investment Group, which was part of GRG.
Why did no one else pick up on her line? I'm not sure but when Betaville got in touch with RBS there was much jumping up and down by the bank. Several arguments later a spokesperson sent over statement - I have pasted it below:
"The Strategic Investment Group consisted mainly of large corporate positions arising from debt for equity transactions. Its balance sheet does not reflect the losses incurred when debt was written off in return for equity. These losses were booked in the relevant part of the bank’s balance sheet where the loan originated so are not shown in the SIG accounts. The SIG accounts reflect the fact that we have offered refunds on all equity instruments in relation to SMEs as part of our automatic fee refund.”
According to the accounts, RBS has offered around £50 million of refunds worth to SMEs [also known as small and medium-sized businesses]. That leaves £350m of what some might describe as profit. No doubt RBS disagrees.....