Royal Bank of Scotland is at last about to dump the ‘RBS’ logotype promoted by its fallen chieftain Fred Goodwin, who thought ‘Scotland’ too parochial for a bank with global ambitions, though he was famously keen on royal connections. The wonder is that this decision has taken seven-and-a-half years since the bank was saved by £46 billion of taxpayers’ money.I suppose Goodwin’s successors, now led by Ross McEwan, have had too many other fires to fight, what with losses piling upon losses (first-quarter results twice as bad as last year’s), delays in the spin-off of the Williams & Glyn subsidiary, computer problems, and a looming scandal in the Swiss branch of Coutts, the group’s wealth arm.
But it was ever thus in large banking groups, and recognition that the parent brand was terminally tainted — while those of subsidiaries such as NatWest and Ulster Bank were still capable of rehabilitation — should have come much sooner. All this is tied up with a belief in the Treasury, prompted by McEwan’s predecessor Stephen Hester, that a higher sale price will eventually be achieved for the taxpayers’ 73 per cent stake in ex-RBS if it is largely held together rather than sold in chunks.
I beg to differ: I believe it will only be saleable if broken up, and I’m hoping this de-branding might prepare the ground. Meanwhile, I gather that NatWest — in which the group’s corporate lending will henceforth be focused — would like to be seen as a reinvigorated ‘challenger’ specialising in the lost art of relationship banking: that’s a worthy aspiration.
Don’t call me AOB
It’s a useful rule of thumb that any business which reduces its name to its initials is heading for trouble. Having gone that way under Goodwin, RBS almost doubled down last year by becoming the lower-case ‘rbs’, before apparently thinking better of it.
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