RBS Third Quarter Loss £3.3 Billion: Bad Loans and Writedowns

Britain’s largest government controlled bank the Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (LON:RBS), have announced a third quarter loss after £3.3 billion ($5.5 billion) of provisions for bad loans and credit-market write downs.

Fund manager at private bank Brown Shipley & Co John Smith said “RBS is still a recovering basket case, but it’s going in the right direction.” The net loss was 1.8 billion pounds, compared with a profit of 871 million pounds in the year earlier period. This was not good news but it could have been worse. The shares gained as much as 8.6 percent in London trading.

RBS is the world’s most expensive bank bailout getting a total of 45.5 billion pounds in capital from the British taxpayer. This week, the 70 percent government owned lender said it would sell its insurance assets, more than 300 U.K. branches, an investment banking division and a credit card payment unit to win EU approval for taxpayer aid.

To read more on this story go to bloomberg.com.