Don’t give greedy RBS chancers any more

WITHOUT doubt, it is right that disgraced former RBS boss Fred Goodwin should be grilled publicly in court as part of the case in which shareholders are claiming they were misled into investing £12 billion before the bank nearly collapsed and had to be bailed out with £45.5 billion of taxpayers’ money.

Goodwin still draws a £342,500-a-year RBS pension, and those shareholders are entitled to want to take every last penny off him. But I am distressed by the greedy manner in which a small group of investors are refusing to accept a settlement in their £700 million legal claim against the bank.

They have already been bailed out with an offer of about £200 million, or 82p per share. This compares with the 200p per share they paid originally, having foolishly made the investment during RBS’s disastrous £12 billion rights issue just before it almost collapsed in 2008. The truth is that shareholders ought to be grateful for what they have already been offered.

Don’t forget that the RBS is still 73 per cent owned by the State, which means you.

Chancellor Philip Hammond, whom I believe was wrong to offer the extra money in the first place, should take the opportunity to expose these people for the avaricious chancers that they are.