RBS will not repay £46bn bailout cash, warns chief

THE Royal Bank of Scotland has lost £130bn since the financial crisis and will never give taxpayers back all their £46bn bailout money, its chairman has admitted.

The staggering figures underline the damage caused by the crisis to Natwest owner RBS, which was the world’s biggest bank before its collapse a decade ago.

In a talk to mark ten years since the crisis, chairman Sir Howard Davies said RBS’s costs from the crisis ran to £130bn – more than the economies of Cuba, Kenya or Luxembourg. This included £49bn on bad loans, £23bn from a disastrous merger with toxic Dutch lender ABN Amro and £20bn on fines and compensation for victims of scandals. And Davies said the £46bn pumped in by the state to keep the lender afloat in 2008 will not be repaid.

Davies, who did not work for RBS at the time of the crisis, added: ‘The bank was rescued to save the UK financial system from collapse, not as a financial investment. That is how it was justified.’

Ministers paid around 500p per share when they bought into RBS to stabilise it. But the share price has since dropped by more than half and shows no sign of ever returning to those heights.