#LA CAIXA PARTICULARS TRIAL#

The claimants’ particulars of claim and a witness statement seen by Reuters detail allegations regarding the bank’s behaviour in the months before its near-collapse they allege there were significant disagreements between staff with responsibility for steering the lender through the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression. Some analysts estimate the total eventual claims against the bank will outstrip RBS’s expectations. It has provisioned $5.6 billion to settle these and other historic misconduct charges. cases alleging mis-selling of mortgage bonds. The bank has already booked billions of pounds of writedowns since 2008 and is facing a number of U.S. But Chief Executive Ross McEwan said last month that the bank, while still pursuing settlement talks with some of the claimants, was ready to fight if the case reaches court.

RBS, which is still 70 percent owned by the British taxpayer, declined to comment for this article. It could end up being one of the costliest cases in English legal history.

#LA CAIXA PARTICULARS TRIAL#

They are now claiming they were misled about the state of the bank’s finances ahead of the 2008 cash call and are seeking compensation for their losses.Ī trial is scheduled to begin in London in March after the two sides failed in July to agree an out-of-court settlement. Just six months later, RBS - Britain’s largest corporate lender and home to hundreds of billions of pounds of customer deposits - required the first tranche of a UK government bailout that ended up costing 45.5 billion pounds.Īs a result, some shareholders, including some of Britain’s biggest institutional fund managers, lost more than 90 percent of their investments. In 2008, the Edinburgh-based bank made a then record 12 billion pound cash call on investors. Little more than a year later, RBS became one of the biggest casualties of the turmoil that engulfed the industry. In the summer of 2007, the bank stunned markets by leading a consortium of lenders in a 71 billion euro ($77.3 billion) takeover of Dutch bank ABN Amro just as worries about a massive U.S. In the 1990s and 2000s, RBS had gone from being a small Scottish lender to a global banking giant, largely thanks to an aggressive expansion plan led by former chief executives George Mathewson and Fred Goodwin. Documents seen by Reuters include the claimants’ particulars of claim and the bank’s defence. The allegations, which focus on the months leading up to the 2008 crisis, are at the heart of a 4 billion pound ($5 billion)lawsuit brought by thousands of RBS’s investors, which is due to start in the UK early next year. In documents filed by lawyers acting for RBS, the bank rejects those allegations, and denies that it should have repriced assets more promptly or that it misled shareholders over its finances. property prices.īut some managers resisted the warnings, allege lawyers acting for RBS shareholders now seeking billions of pounds in compensation for losses suffered when the bank was bailed out in the 2008 crisis, according to the claimants’ “particulars of claim” and a witness statement seen by Reuters. The claimants’ filings allege senior managers were warned by internal risk experts for more than six months that overvalued toxic debt, including subprime mortgage bonds, had left the bank dangerously exposed to a collapse in U.S.

LONDON (Reuters) - Royal Bank of Scotland bosses avoided repricing billions of dollars of souring investments on the eve of the 2008 financial crisis for fear of endangering bonuses and a takeover bid for a rival, court documents allege.

La caixa particulars