It's lost £2 billion this year yet it's paid the people who can't do their jobs over £1 billion in bonus .... why don't we all dial 999 to report a crime .....
IIRC a fair chunk of that is due to problems in previous years coming home to roost (that 2 billion is about what they loaned governments alone, but they are also facing PPI payouts in large amounts from misselling over a number of years).
A loss at a company, even a big loss does not mean the people currently running it are doing a bad job - some of the people getting bonuses have probably made the company tens of millions, or reduced losses significantly.
From what I remember RBS is currently the lowest paying of the major UK banks for many of it's money making staff (IE those working in the likes of investment and corporate banking*), and if I'm remembering correctly there was someone on TV earlier who pointed out it had already lost a lot of the best staff because of the already lower wages.
They've also had their Insurance section make it back into profit, so it's not as simple as saying "they've made a loss, no one should get a bonus", as parts of it ARE making a profit, the problem is that they've got costs that are out of the hands of the staff at the moment, which are causing them to make a loss (so potentially the losses could have been much worse if the parts of the business that are making a profit were not).
It's like British Gas.
Apparently they've had a 30% fall in profits last year.
But Centrica (who own BG) as a group made very slightly better profits (showing that BG's profits probably don't make a big portion of Centrica's profits as a whole).
With any large business working in multiple sectors parts of it can be making a profit, whilst the business as a whole makes a loss, or parts of it can be making less profit (or a loss) whilst the business as a whole makes a profit.
As to the original question.
The government owning RBS could, in theory distort the market to a degree.
*Personal banking (IE high street/personal accounts), basically don't make much money at all.
surely not true
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