Bank has deep pockets so it means shareholders face fight for day in court

THE group of Royal Bank of Scotland shareholders looking to launch a fresh legal claim against the bailed-out bank will face an uphill struggle to have their day in court.

As was proved earlier this year, when the bank agreed an 11th-hour settlement with the RBoS Shareholder Action Group rather than have its former executives answer questions about its 2008 cash call, the bank has deep pockets when it comes to fending off legal challenges.

Not only was it able to find the funds to pay the group 82p per share when those who settled last year got just 43p, but it also had the wherewithal to run up £129 million in legal fees by engaging no fewer than 13 barristers and what High Court judge Mr Justice Hildyard termed “serried ranks of solicitors and paralegals”.

This is why the new action group will have to be able to secure litigation funding if the case is ever to get off the ground. Without it, the shareholders, some of whom have already lost so much, would be exposed to enormous losses if they became liable for RBS’s costs.

Doing so may be easier said than done. The original group, which ended up being funded by a large corporate claimant, who accepted the settlement offer, passed through three different teams of legal advisers before making it to the doors of the court, with disagreements about funding understood to have been the driver for the changes.

The new group may also find its numbers begin to diminish once its intentions have been made clear, with some late-claimants, who paid subscription money to join the original group, apparently in the dark about what the new group intends to do.

One such shareholder said he had asked for his £600 fee back after being told he was not eligible for a share of the 82p-a-share settlement while another, who has left his £330 sub with the group for now, did not have any knowledge of the potential new claim.Though it is small beer in comparison to the sums RBS is likely to rack up, every penny counts when it comes to establishing a fighting fund. If the late claimants start to vote with their feet this is one fight that may well never get started. THOMAS Cook pilots will stage three more strikes if talks at the conciliation service Acas do not resolve a pay dispute, their union has announced.

Members of the British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa) launched a 12-hour walkout at 3am yesterday, although the company said its flights were operating.

The union said there will be three more strikes, on September 23 and 29 and October 6, if there is no breakthrough during talks at Acas starting next week.

Balpa general secretary Brian Strutton said: “We will now focus on trying to make progress at five days of Acas talks over the next two weeks.

“However, there is still a significant gap between us and Thomas Cook so we cannot assume that those talks will succeed. That’s