RBS hints at sell-off pause

RETAIL investors have failed in a bid to win more power over the way Royal Bank of Scotland is run as its outgoing finance chief played down talk the Government will sell off part of the taxpayer stake.

Shareholder groups had battled for two years to force the lender to agree to hold a vote on establishing an investor advisory committee, which would have a say on issues such as executive pay. But the motion was backed by just 1.35 per cent of votes cast at yesterday’s AGM.

RBS said it “welcomed the overwhelming vote to reject the resolution requisitioned to create a shareholder committee”.

Before the meeting in Edinburgh, RBS had announced the resignation of Ewen Stevenson as chief financial officer “to take up an opportunity elsewhere”. He declined to say where he is going and when.

He had previously been seen as a potential successor to chief executive Ross McEwan, with whom he has worked over the past four years to restore the bank’s fortunes after its government bailout. It recently made its first annual profit in a decade.

Speculation has mounted that the Government, which has a holding of about 70 per cent, could sell 10 per cent to investors in the next few days to raise £3billion. It is hoping to sell £15billion worth of shares by 2023.

Stevenson cautioned that now is not the “optimum” time to sell down the taxpayer stake amid jitters on stock markets caused by political uncertainty in Italy and Spain.

He said: “Obviously when you look at what’s been happening in the markets in the last few days with Spain and Italy and a significant sell-off in bank stocks, I would be surprised if now is an optimum time to sell stocks.”

RBS defended its decision to scale back its high street presence as more customers switch to mobile banking. It recently announced plans to close 162 branches in England and Wales with the loss of nearly 800 jobs.

McEwan told investors: “Customers are using our digital channels at an unprecedented rate and this has meant we have had to take the hard decision to close a number of branches.

“Banking is changing and we need to rise to the challenge. If we don’t, we will fail – and that isn’t good for our customers, and certainly not good for our longterm future.”