END OF THE LINE FOR RBS

After 300 years of history, bank to rebrand as NatWest to sever toxic links with crash of 2008

IT IS a name that speaks both to an illustrious banking pedigree and a toxic recent past.

But yesterday, Royal Bank of Scotland Group prepared to sweep away almost 300 years of history with plans for a rebranding in an effort to escape its association with the financial crash.

RBS chief executive Alison Rose said the Edinburghbased giant, which owns RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank, would rename itself NatWest Group later this year after it revealed a near-doubling of annual profits.

The group – which remains 62 per cent state-owned – reported profits of £3.1billion for 2019, up from £1.6billion the year before, and Ms Rose hailed the results as the ‘start of a new era’ for the bank.

It is thought Ms Rose is hoping a rebrand will help shift the lender’s image away from its links with the financial crisis in 2008, when RBS required a £45billion bailout from the public purse to keep it afloat.

Ms Rose, a 25-year veteran of the bank, is one of the few senior executives left from the pre-crisis era, when disgraced former chief executive Fred Goodwin’s overambitious expansion plans left the bank in a perilous state.

When a liquidity crisis struck in 2008, it posted an annual loss of £24.1billion – the biggest in UK corporate history. The Government had to provide £45.5billion of share capital.

Ms Rose stressed the parent company’s name change would not alter services for RBS or NatWest customers.

The names of individual NatWest and RBS branches will also remain unaffected, meaning the RBS logo will remain a feature on high streets.

Ms Rose added that the change would not result in any job cuts across the group.

But the rebranding as NatWest, which has around 80 per cent of the group’s UK customers, is hugely symbolic and a further humiliation for the bank, founded in 1727.

Group chairman Howard Davies said: ‘As the bank has evolved from the financial crisis and the bailout, we have focused on the NatWest brand. We have exited a lot of the international business which was not profitable.

‘That was branded RBS and that’s gone. It really makes no sense for us to continue to be called RBS. It was designed for a global group of brands, which we no longer are.’

He said the registered office will remain in Edinburgh.

The decision comes as Ms Rose unveiled a 5p-a-share special dividend, which means the Government, as the biggest shareholder – will receive a payout of nearly £600million.

With an interim dividend already paid out, it means the taxpayer has been handed £1.7billion so far this year.

The payment was possible because the bank managed to hit an operating profit before tax of £4.2billion – up 26 per cent from £3.4billion in 2018.

RBS also announced it was committed to ‘at least halve the climate impact’ of its financing activity by 2030, pledging to stop lending to coal companies by the end of the decade and to make its own operations ‘net carbon zero’ by the end of this year.

RBS’s share price fell by nearly 5 per cent after its results were revealed.

Rose revolution – Page 106