Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc

ABOUT THIS COMPANY:

Royal in name and lineage

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) serves more than 40 million individuals and institutions through 30 different brands. Its main units include: U.K. corporate banking, U.S. retail and commercial banking (which offers services through the Citizens and Charter One brands), U.K. personal banking (through the NatWest and RBS brands), global banking and markets (investment banking and capital markets services), EMEA retail and commercial banking (through Ulster Bank), and RBS Insurance. In the U.S., the global banking and markets group encompasses corporate banking, leveraged finance, project finance, loan and high-yield markets, as well as RBS Greenwich Capital—an institutional fixed-income firm that supplies corporate finance and debt capital markets services. In addition to the U.S., RBS has an American presence in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, and Uruguay. Truly a royal bank, RBS was chartered by King George in 1727. For the first 50 years of its existence, RBS operated from a single location in Edinburgh, but in 1783, it opened a branch in Glasgow. By the 1870s, it had set up shop in London, and from there it grew rapidly, acquiring a number of English banks and opening a New York office in 1960. More mergers followed, and it celebrated Britain’s biggest bank takeover with the 2000 acquisition of National Westminster Bank (NatWest). In 2007, RBS led a consortium to acquire ABN AMRO, marking the world's biggest bank takeover. In its 2008 fiscal year, RBS set a record (but not a pretty one): the bank’s annual loss of over £24 billion represented the biggest annual loss of any corporation in British history. One week after dropping that bombshell, RBS became the first bank to join the British government’s asset protection program for troubled institutions, eventually accepting funds from a £50 billion bailout plan, a move that left the British government with a 70 percent stake in the bank. Today, RBS is still majority-owned by the British government. Led by its chief executive Stephen Hester, RBS employs more than 145,000 people worldwide.