RBS has announced the largest annual loss in UK corporate history, signalling that substantial job losses are on the cards.
The part-nationalised banking group said its 2008 loss totalled £24.1bn. RBS confirmed it would split itself in two, to isolate the troubled areas of the business into a “bad bank” and allow the stock market to place a value on the remaining core operations.
Some £325bn of unwanted assets will be transferred to a the bad bank, which led reports earlier this week to suggest that as many as 20,000 jobs would go – equivalent to about one in five RBS employees – on top of the thousands of positions already axed.
Bailed out with £20bn of government cash last year, RBS admitted it would need to make “sweeping” changes to its structure following the loss and could not rule out significant job losses. The government will inject a further £13bn into the group to strengthen its balance sheet, the BBC reported.
