RBS Puts The Boot In

The Royal Bank of Scotland has put the boot in to Barclays bid for ABN Amro Holding NV, by claiming that the Barclays bid would cost 9,000 jobs net.

RBS said its proposed deal would lead to a maximum of 2,000 job losses in Britain, but the Barclays deal would lead to 11,000 losses.

RBS also hit the headlines this weekend, when its cash machines went off line; leaving millions of RBS and NatWest customers in the UK unable to withdraw money.

Although they are now back on line, Royal Bank of Scotland has refused to explain what happened.

The problems started at around 10pm on Friday, when a system failure meant that 13 million customers of RBS and NatWest were unable to use ATMs to take money out of their account. The problem extended to customers trying to use other banks' machines to access funds.

A spokesperson for the banking group said:

"It would be inappropriate to go into any further details due to security implications."

Derek French, director of the Campaign for Community Banking Services, said:

"It is appalling for a bank to be off-line and more importantly unable to deliver cash over a weekend at which point branches will be closed."

Another nail in the coffin of the reputation of British banks.