Bird & Bird acting for Royal Bank of Scotland Shareholder Action Group
The RBS Shareholder Action Group is reported (see today’s Evening Standard) to have commenced proceedings against three former Royal Bank of Scotland directors – Fred Goodwin, Tom McKillop and Johnny Cameron – and RBS for alleged misrepresentations in RBS’s 2008 emergency rights issue document. From the Standard report:
“The action group’s claim states RBS failed to disclose to shareholders and the market that it was reliant on $11.9 billion (£7.6 billion) in cheap loans provided by the US Federal Reserve at the time of the rights issue.”
Tediously, RBS isn’t fessing up and intends to defend the claim “vigorously”.
The RBS Shareholder Action Group is a company limited by guarantee whose members, reports the Standard, include “7400 private shareholders and some 80 institutional investors including Collins Stewart, Deutsche Bank, SG Hambro, State Street Securities and HSBC Global Custody”.
It is regrettable testimony to the quiet coup that saw the finance industry capture society, regulators and politicians in the years before the financial crisis that – absent criminality – no one from the large UK banks has yet been successfully held to account in any court for their part in causing the crisis. We’ll watch the RBS action with interest.
Friendly Corporate PSL
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