I just had a read of the Financial Conduct Authority’s report on the Global Restructuring Group of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). This was published by the Treasury Select Committee despite the fact that the FCA wished to delay it further. At 361 pages in length, it’s not exactly a quick read.
The operations of GRG have been the subject of many complaints – hundreds in fact from mainly smaller businesses. This was a part of GRG where borrowers in default were placed so as to “help” them. In reality their fees were raised and many of the financially distressed companies that went through the process ended up being put into administration.
The FCA report certainly supports many of the complaints. It says one in six of the cases it examined RBS had caused “material financial distress”. They suggest there were major failings in GRG’s “governance and oversight arrangements” where narrow commercial objectives were paramount. The interests of their customers were ignored and the stated objectives of GRG to support the turnaround of potentially viable customers was not pursued. In summary they conclude there was “widespread inappropriate treatment of customers”.
In other words, the interests of RBS took precedence. Bearing in mind that this was the culture in RBS under the leadership of Fred Goodwin, it’s not that surprising. I saw this myself where RBS was involved with public companies in some difficulties. The other stakeholders seemed to be ignored by RBS who pursued their own interests regardless. But should borrowers have ever expected a bank like RBS to take account of their interests?
Regrettably small businesses often rely on bank lending to fund their working capital. This is a very dangerous practice when working capital can swing violently in response to market circumstances. Even larger companies often go bust when they take on too much debt unwisely and simply run out of cash – the latest example being Carillion of course.
Since the financial crisis of 2008, people have lowered their trust in bankers. They are now rated alongside estate agents and used car salesmen. But past trusts in bankers was always misplaced. Bankers are there to make money from you or your company. When you have lots of assets and cash, they are happy to lend on good terms. When you really need the funds, they will be reluctant to lend and if they do charge high fees and impose onerous terms. The moral is: businesses should be financed by risk capital, i.e. equity or preference shares.
Companies that gear up their balance sheets with debt rather than equity (and RBS itself was a great example of the problem of little equity to support its business back in 2008), might apparently be improving the “efficiency” of their financial structure and enable higher profits but in reality they are also increasing the riskiness of the business. Investors should be very wary of companies with high or increasing debts. It might look easy to repay the interest due out of cash flow now, but tomorrow it might look very different.
You can read the full FCA report on GRG here: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/treasury/s166-rbs-grg.pdf
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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