RBS shake-up as investment bank pair axed

ROYAL Bank of Scotland has ousted two top executives from its struggling investment bank as Alison Rose takes charge.

The state- owned lender revealed Natwest Markets boss Chris Marks and finance chief Richard Place were stepping down, with a search for successors already under way.

Robert Begbie, RBS’s treasurer, has been appointed as Natwest Markets’s interim boss, while treasury finance director Robert Horrocks will temporarily be the investment bank’s chief financial officer.

The shake-up comes after shareholders called on RBS to scale back its investment banking activities to concentrate on its other businesses.

And it represents the first major change at the bank since Rose, 50, replaced Ross McEwan as group chief executive last month.

In a speech shortly after taking over, Rose ( pictured) warned staff to brace themselves for ‘tough choices’ and vowed to reduce ‘ bad costs across the bank’.

Yesterday, she thanked Marks and Place ‘for their commitment and dedication to this bank, its staff and its clients’.

She added: ‘They have set the foundations for the continuing transformation and simplification across Natwest Markets.’

Marks and Place will stay on at RBS to ensure an ‘orderly transition’ until June and March next year respectively, the bank added.

Marks said: ‘I am proud to have been a part of the journey to transform the bank.’

RBS’s investment bank once spanned the globe with assets greater than Britain’s GDP, but it also made catastrophic market bets that led to a £45bn taxpayer bailout during the financial crisis.

Former boss McEwan long argued that Natwest Markets was worth keeping for its ability to supply foreign exchange, financing and hedging to the bank’s corporate clients.

But with profits dwindling and its business largely confined to bond trading, critics say it is ripe for cuts.

Natwest Markets slumped to a £193m third- quarter loss from an £87m profit a year earlier, helping to tip RBS into an overall £8m overall loss. Analysts branded the performance ‘deplorable’ and the situation also angered shareholders, who demanded changes.

Five investors have told Rose she should consider shrinking Natwest Markets as part of her bigger vision for RBS.

‘They should look again at whether it is really worth persisting with Natwest Markets at this scale,’ said one top ten shareholder. The taxpayer remains the biggest investor in RBS, with 62.1pc, after the Government bailed it out during the financial crisis. Shares in RBS dipped 0.5pc, or 1.3p,

to close at 247.4p.