Treasury Committee chair tells City watchdog to spill the beans on RBS’ GRG
The chair of the influential Treasury Committee is today calling on the City watchdog to reveal more details from its review into Royal Bank of Scotland's Global Restructuring Group (GRG).
The bank was accused of purposely pushing small businesses into GRG, and effectively driving them into the ground for its own gain. Last November, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said it had seen no widespread evidence of such behaviour. RBS also poured £400m into a pool to reimburse firms caught up in the scandal.
However, the FCA is yet to publish details from the independent skilled persons report which was produced as part of its investigation, apart from some of its high-level conclusions. Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of the FCA, indicated last summer a more robust report would be published before the end of 2016.
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"More detail on the design of this scheme is welcome," said Committee chair Andrew Tyrie. "It will help to give firms who fell victim to GRG's bad practices more confidence that they are to receive reasonable compensation. They deserve it."
A letter from Bailey to Tyrie explained the regulator would publish a fuller account of its findings once it had completed its investigation, but would not appropriate to "pre-empt the outcome of this further work". The FCA declined to comment further.
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An RBS spokesperson said:
We continue to cooperate fully with the FCA and remain keen to understand – and learn lessons from – any conclusions that the FCA draws. We also continue to implement our new complaints process, overseen by retired High Court judge Sir William Blackburne and the automatic refund of complex fees paid by small business customers in GRG. These steps were developed with the agreement of the FCA.
RBS is due to report its full year results on 24 February.