‘Bargain’ RBS sale blasted
Anger over £3billion taxpayer loss
THE Government has been blasted over its “bargain basement” sale of Royal Bank of Scotland shares.
Officials yesterday confirmed they raised £2.5billion by flogging 7.7% of the taxpayers’ stake in the lender for 271p a share.
As the Mirror revealed yesterday, it left the public nursing a £3bn loss on the shares compared with what was spent – including financing costs – to save RBS in the financial crisis.
Rob MacGregor, national officer at the union Unite, said: “The Government is attempting to wash its hands of Royal Bank of Scotland at the expense of the taxpayer. This bargain basement sale of over 7% of the bank’s shares is a betrayal of public finances.”
RBS’s share price slumped more than 5% yesterday, leaving City investors that bought the stake sitting on a paper loss.
It also wiped another near £1.2bn off the Government’s remaining 62.4% holding, which is now worth less than £20bn.
Laith Khalaf, analyst at broker Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “It’s now clear the losses sustained by the taxpayer on the RBS bailout are going to be substantial, though this really reflects the price paid for financial stability in the depths of the global banking crisis.”
The names of the investors who bought the 925,000 of taxpayer shares have been kept secret.
Lib Dem peer Baroness Kramer warned the Government may not have taken into account the potential cost of a scandal within RBS’s notorious Global Restructuring Group.
Treasury spokesman Lord Bates dismissed criticism, saying RBS was “a very different organisation” to the one which was bailed out in 2008.