Arrangement Corporate Travel Uk
Arrangement Corporate Travel Uk
The Royal Bank of Scotland Group (LSE: RBS) is a British state owned banking and insurance holding company in which HM Treasury holds an 84% controlling share (economic interest, actual voting rights will not rise above 75% in order to retain stock listing). This stake is held and managed through UK Financial Investments Limited. The group is based in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is the world's largest company by assets.
The group controls the Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, founded in 1727 by a Royal Charter of King George I, the National Westminster Bank, which can trace its lineage back to 1650, and Ulster Bank in Ireland.
RBS Group is the largest banking group in Scotland, and at its earlier peak was the second largest in the UK and Europe (fifth in stock market value), and the fifth largest in the world by market capitalisation. According to Forbes Global 2000, it was the tenth largest company in the world. Its shares have a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange. The registered head office of the group and the UK clearing bank are located at St Andrew Square, Edinburgh. In 2005, Queen Elizabeth II opened the bank's new head office building in Gogarburn, Edinburgh.
The RBS Group operates a wide variety of banking brands offering personal and business banking, private banking, insurance and corporate finance throughout its operations located in Europe, North America and Asia. In the UK and Republic of Ireland, the main subsidiary companies are: The Royal Bank of Scotland; National Westminster Bank; Ulster Bank; Drummonds and Coutts & Co. In the United States, it owns Citizens Financial Group, the 8th largest bank in the country. From 2004 to 2009 it was the second largest shareholder in the Bank of China, itself the world's fifth largest bank by market capitalization in February 2008. Insurance companies include Churchill Insurance, Direct Line, Privilege, and NIG.
The group issues banknotes in Scotland and Northern Ireland and, as of 2008, Royal Bank of Scotland is the only bank in the UK still to print a £1 note.
History
Takeover bids
During the late 1970s and early 1980s the Royal Bank was the subject of three separate takeover approaches. In 1979, Lloyds Bank, which had previously built up a 16.4% stake in the Royal Bank, made a takeover approach for the remaining shares it did not own. The offer was rejected by the board of management on the basis it was detrimental to the bank's operations. However when the Standard Chartered Bank, proposed a merger with the Royal Bank in 1980, the board of management responded favourably to the offer. Standard Chartered Bank was headquartered in London, although most of its operations were in the Far East, and the Royal Bank saw advantages in creating a truly international banking group. Approval was received from the Bank of England, and the two banks agreed a merger plan that would see the Standard Chartered acquire the Royal Bank and keep the UK operations based in Edinburgh. However the bid was scuppered by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) which tabled a rival offer. The bid by HSBC was not backed by the Bank of England, and was subsequently rejected by the Royal Bank’s board of management. However the British government referred both bids to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission; both were subsequently rejected as being against the public interest.
The Bank did obtain an international partnership with Banco Santander Central Hispano of Spain, each bank taking a 5% stake in the other. However this arrangement ended in 2005, when Banco Santander Central Hispano acquired UK bank, Abbey National – and both banks sold their respective shareholdings.
International expansion
The first international office of the bank was opened in New York in 1960. Subsequent international banks were opened in Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Hong Kong. In 1988 the bank acquired Citizens Financial Group, a bank based in Rhode Island, United States. Since then, Citizens has acquired several other American banks, and in 2004 acquired Charter One Bank to become the 8th largest bank in the United States.
The Royal Bank also opened offices in Europe and now has subsidiaries in: Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, Germany, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the Asia-Pacific region, the bank has offices in: Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan and Singapore.
National Westminster Bank
The late 1990s saw a new wave of consolidation in the financial services sector. In 1999, the Bank of Scotland launched a hostile takeover bid for English rival, NatWest. The Bank of Scotland intended to fund the deal by selling off many of the NatWest’s subsidiary companies, including Ulster Bank and Coutts. However, the Royal Bank subsequently tabled a counter-offer, sparking off the largest hostile takeover battle in UK corporate history. A key differentiation from the Bank of Scotland’s bid was the Royal Bank’s plan to retain all of NatWest’s subsidiaries. Although NatWest, one of the "Big 4" English clearing banks, was significantly larger than either Scottish bank, it had a recent history of poor financial performance and plans to merge with insurance company Legal & General were not well received, prompting a 26% fall in share price.
On 11 February 2000, the Royal Bank of Scotland was declared the winner in the takeover battle, becoming the second largest banking group in the UK after HSBC Holdings. NatWest and the Royal Bank of Scotland became subsidiaries of the holding company; The Royal Bank of Scotland Group. NatWest as a distinct banking brand was retained, although many back office functions of the bank were merged with the Royal Bank's leading to over 18,000 job losses throughout the UK.
Further expansion
In 1967, RBS became the first Scottish bank to install an Automated Teller Machine, and by 1980 the service, known as Cashline had become the busiest ATM network in the world. Today it is now the largest privately owned ATM network in the UK, it is also a member of the LINK ATM network. In 1997, RBS was the first bank in the world to make its ATMs available to all cardholders. The word Cashline , in Scotland at least has become a generic term for an ATM.
In August 2005, the bank expanded into China, acquiring a 10% stake in the Bank of China for £1.7 billion .
A new international headquarters was built at Gogarburn on the outskirts of Edinburgh, and was opened by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in 2005. The St Andrew Square office still remains the official registered head office.
The bank was the 2005 recipient of the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award, an award given to enterprises and individuals who use information technology in a society-transforming way.
The Group is part of a consortium with Belgian bank Fortis and Spanish bank Banco Santander that acquired Dutch Bank ABN AMRO a on 10 October 2007. Rivals speculated that RBS had overpaid for the Dutch bank although the bank pointed out that of the £49bn paid for ABN AMRO, RBS's share was only £10bn (equivalent to £167 per citizen of the UK) .
Coutts Bank's international businesses were renamed RBS Coutts on 1 January 2008.
2008-2009 financial crisis
After previous denials following press coverage, on the 22 April 2008 RBS announced a rights issue which aimed to raise £12bn in new capital to offset a writedown of £5.9bn resulting from credit market positions and to shore up its reserves following the purchase of ABN AMRO. This was, at the time, the largest rights issue in British corporate history. The bank also announced that it would review the possibility of divesting some of its subsidiaries to raise further funds, notably its insurance divisions Direct Line and Churchill.. Churchill and Direct line currently remain as part of RBS Group.
On 13 October 2008, in a move aimed at recapitalising the bank, it was announced that the British Government would take a stake of up to 58% in the Group. The aim was to "make available new tier 1 capital to UK banks and building societies to strengthen their resources permitting them to restructure their finances, while maintaining their support for the real economy, through the recapitalisation scheme which has been made available to eligible institutions". A rights issue to existing shareholders having failed to secure more than minimal take-up, the government subsequently found itself owning more than 57% of the bank's equity share capital.
The Treasury would infuse £37bn ($64bn, €47bn, equivalent to £617 per citizen of the UK) of new capital into Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Lloyds TSB and HBOS Plc, to avert financial sector collapse. The government stressed, however, that it was not "standard public ownership" and that the banks would return to private investors "at the right time.".
Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling stated UK taxpayers would benefit from the government's rescue plan, as it will have some control over RBS in exchange for £5bn in preference shares and underwriting the issuance of a further £15bn in ordinary shares. If shareholder take-up of the share issue was 0% then total government ownership in RBS would be 58% and if shareholder take-up was 100% then total government ownership in RBS would be 0%.. In the event, less than 56 million new shares were taken up by investors, or 0.24pc of the total offered by RBS in October 2008.
As a consequence of the mismanagement which necessitated this r
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