2,000 jobs to go at RBS after Stephen Hester exit
Royal Bank of Scotland is expected to announce 2,000 job losses in the wake of boss Stephen Hester’s plans to stand down after five years at the helm.
The cuts are expected to be spread around the bank’s offices across the world, but it is feared some workers in the City will lose their jobs as the global investment arm is decreased from 11,000 staff to 9,000.
Mr Hester will leave later this year and will receive 12 months’ pay and benefits worth £1.6 million and the potential for a £4 million shares windfall from a long-term incentive scheme. But he will receive no bonus for 2013.
He told Channel 4 News how he would have been willing to take RBS through privatisation but that “would have been the end of a journey”.
Bust bank
Mr Hester was credited with saving “a bust bank” by Chancellor George Osborne, who commended his work at the head of an institution that received a multi-billion pound government bailout in 2008.
He said: “We are now in a position where the Government can begin to prepare for privatising RBS.
“While leading that process would be the end of an incredible chapter for me, ideally for the company it should be led by someone at the beginning of their journey.”
Chancellor George Osborne said Mr Hester should be commended for “having brought RBS back from the brink” following its taxpayer bailout at the height of the financial crisis.
Broken culture
He said: “When Stephen Hester took on the job at RBS in 2008 it was a bust bank with a broken culture and posed a huge risk to financial stability.
“RBS today is safer, stronger and better able to support its customers. I want to commend Stephen Hester for everything he has done to make this turnaround possible.”
He added Mr Hester had “made an important contribution to Britain’s recovery from the financial crisis”.
But former city minister Lord Myners said the RBS board had been “doing the bidding” of the Chancellor.