RBS to repay £163bn of loans to government
ROYAL Bank of Scotland (RBS) is set to announce today that it will finish repaying £163bn in emergency loans it owes to the UK and US governments.
RBS, which is 82 per cent owned by the British government, will unveil the plan when it publishes its first quarter results today – which are expected to show a slight decline in retail profits for the first quarter but a smaller loss across the whole group.
The repayments cover £75bn that RBS received from the credit guarantee programme, which was a key plank of the government’s bailout of banks in October 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.
It also includes repayment of the £36.6bn it received through emergency liquidity assistance from the Bank of England and $84.5bn (£52bn) loaned by the US Federal Reserve.
RBS is still borrowing from the European Central Bank’s long-term refinancing operation but it is thought that the €10bn (£8.1bn) of loans from this source is seen as a way of raising cheap funding.
Separately Lloyds bank says that it will have finished paying back its debt to the UK government by the end of this year. Lloyds’ debts peaked at £157bn.