RBS's long recovery

摘要

Royal Bank of Scotland's (RBS) progress on the long road to recovery could see the bank start to pay dividends by 2018, but any further sale of the shares is likely to be delayed for a year or two by the UK's decision to leave the EU, according to Ross McEwan, the bank's chief executive. The fallout from Brexit, the impact of sustained low interest rates, outstanding conduct issues, the need to further cut costs and to offload the Williams & Glyn business are the main challenges still faced by the bank, which was bailed out by the UK government in 2008 during the financial crisis. The government now owns 73% of RBS, following an initial sale of just over 5% in August 2015. At the same time, says Mr McEwan, a New Zea-lander who became CEO in October 2013, RBS has made huge strides in its restructuring and is now well into the second of three phases. The new RBS will focus on the UK and Ireland for 90% of its revenues, is being rebranded to reflect the switch from a global to a domestic bank, has strengthened its IT (which caused the bank huge problems in the past) and has worked out viable models for the payments and markets parts of the business, he says.