Royal Bank of Scotland is looking at making radical changes to its plan to set up and sell off Williams & Glyn in a bid to accelerate the much-delayed project, with most of the options looking at alternatives to the hugely expensive IT project currently underway – but one potential idea even includes the sale of NatWest. The Sunday Telegraph understands that the bank and its advisers have carried out a series of brainstorming exercises to seek any alternative routes to establish spin off bank W&G, to save time and money on the £1.5bn project and to prove to the European Commission that bosses really have done everything they can to create the new challenger bank quickly. Last month bosses revealed that there is a “significant risk” the new bank will not be independent by the end of 2017, the deadline imposed by the EC after RBS missed the previous target of the end of 2016.
Royal Bank of Scotland (W&G) is considering making radical changes to its plan to set up and sell off Williams & Glyn (RBS) as it tries to accelerate the delayed project. Reports suggest that W&G and its advisers have been trying to find alternative routes to establish spin off bank, RBS, so as to save time and money on the £1.5bn project. One plan would be to set up RBS as a separate bank but let it continue using W&G’ systems – the same setup used by TSB when it was sold off by Lloyds. Another, far more radical idea discussed by the advisers, would include splitting off NatWest as well, joining the large retail bank to RBS and selling them as one much larger bank. As we noted last month, W&G warned it would miss the deadline with the European Union of the new bank being independent by the end of 2017.