RBS report details to be published

15th Dec 2010 08:09

Investors should soon be able to see exactly why the Financial Services Authority decided the directors that brought down Royal Bank of Scotland had no case to answer, after the regulator bowed to pressure to release details of its inquiry.FSA chairman Lord Turner says that the regulator will seek the neccessary permission of RBS and other third parties to make more details public. It appears that the FSA will not be publishing the full account but "a clear description of any failings", according to Lord turner. Critics slammed the FSA's decision to initially publish the verdict of its 18-month investigation earlier this month on one sheet of A4. The regulator said it could not release more details because of confidentiality issues, but Sir Fred Goodwin, RBS's chief executive at the time, has since been reported as saying he has no objections.Politicians were furious about the paucity of information released by the FSA. "We cannot learn the lessons of the worst corporate crash in British history if we can't see the evidence," Lord Oakeshott, a Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said.A bevy of top government ministers, including the chancellor George Osborne and business secretary Vince Cable, also reportedly told the FSA it must find a way to publish at least part of its inquiry.RBS needed a £45bn taxpayer-funded bail-out to survive after it bought ABN Amro for €70bn in 2007 just as the credit crunch gripped the bank sector. The UK taxpayer now owns an 84% stake in the bank.After the investigation, carried out with PWC, the FSA concluded that chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin and other former senior executives of RBS made 'bad decisions' but did not act fraudulently.