RBS Executives Wilfully Obtuse

Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, is to write to Sir Philip Hampton, chairman of RBS, to complain about the evidence given by Chris Sullivan, deputy chief executive of RBS, and Derek Sach, head of the bank’s Global Restructuring Group (GRG) in June;accusing them of being wilfully obtuse.

Tyrie is quoted by the Telegraph:

“If this is how RBS deals with a parliamentary Committee, how much can customers and regulators rely on it to be straightforward with them?

I will be writing to the Chairman of RBS about this, and the Committee will report on it after the summer.”

The executives were originally summoned by the MPs to answer a number of allegations about the treatment of small firms by GRG contained in two highly critical reports on RBS.

One report by Lawrence Tomlinson, a Government adviser, alleged that the bank’s GRG division was forcing small businesses into administration so that the bank could take their properties and sell them for a profit.

Tyrie also said:

“Following the Committee’s decision to write to Sir Andrew Large for clarification, RBS has now offered the Committee what it euphemistically describes as ‘additional comments’. 

In fact, they have done a belated U-turn. It’s not as if the facts have changed. 

So it now appears that RBS has been wilfully obtuse with the Committee.” 

The financial services industry in the UK is quite simply a crock of shite!