4 billion over the first six months of 2009

Royal Bank of douché Scotlanda enthusiasm of the City on the pace of its recovery. 70 Owned by the British State universal bank group suffered a net loss of 1 billion pounds in the first half and, according to its Director General, Stephen Hester, "the results could not improve substantially until 2011". "We have embarked in a marathon not a sprint", he commented. The action has lost more than 12 Friday. RBS lost 24.3 billion pounds on the whole of 2008 due to the purchase of ABN-AMRO. Its operating loss excluding exceptional items was registered to 6.9 billion and this indicator has been negative 3.4 billion over the first six months of 2009.

Unlike its competitor Lloyds Banking Group, RBS doesn't predict the "peak" of the provisions on credit in 2009. As a result of the economic recession, these reached 7.5 billion (1.5 billion more than in the second half of 2008) to a 14.8 billion in revenue. RBS will also have to get used to a lasting reduction of its interest margins, while the Government objectives for crédit to the United Kingdom companies to announce difficult to fulfill, because of the weakness of the application, provides the Bank.

Records in the trading of rates

However, the beginning of the year broke all records in the rate and credit trading, but a "normalization" is expected, and already noticeable in the second quarter. RBS posted 1.8 billion costs for staff in its Investment Bank and Stephen Hester does not waive guaranteed bonuses, in the stricter limits set at the beginning of the year, because the departures of well rated employees to the competition have multiplied.

The loss would have been worse without the decrease of one fifth of the depreciations of "toxic" assets, returned to 4.2 billion (more than half related to "monoline" insurance and cover type CDS instruments), and the added value of 3.8 billion pounds from an exchange of obligations. According to the market to five-year plan, the Group's performance "over the next two years" remain "lean" etle retail banking recovery will be slower than that of the Investment Bank. But Stephen Hester said "optimistic" in the medium term, pointing to the operating income of $ 6.3 billion directed by his group out of its problematic or peripheral activities ("non-core").This "non-core" part has its own management as a "bad bank". It will shrink over the period 2009-2013 refunds and credit essentially securitizations. It also plans to 50 to 60 billion pounds from disposals of assets. The latter have reached 9 billion in the first half, of which 3.9 billion for Bank of China (excluding Asian assets transferred last week). In the meantime, the use of the Government of guarantee of the assets, 316 billion plan (free "first loss" included), is "essential" to increase the ratio of solvency "core Tier-1" (6.4 end of June). RBS hopes to finalise the discussions in the fall and especially succeed to convince the European Commission, which might focus closely on its huge share of the market of SMEs across.