22:12
Tieng Anh Vui
Royal Bank of Scotland is expected to announce 2,000 job losses later, after it emerged its boss Stephen Hester is to quit after five years in the job.
The cuts are expected to be spread worldwide as the investment division is pruned, with some jobs going in the UK.
Mr Hester has said he would have liked to stay on as boss until the bank - 81% publicly owned - was reprivatised.
Ex-City minister Lord Myners has said the decision he should quit was taken at Chancellor George Osborne's bidding.
BBC economics correspondent Hugh Pym says the search starts today for Mr Hester's successor in a position with "more than its share of public scrutiny" - given that a large stake of the bank is owned by taxpayers following a government bailout.
There was a strong hint from RBS chairman Sir Philip Hampton that the government was keen to start the sale process late next year, but the Treasury has denied there is any firm timetable, our correspondent says.
'Osborne's bidding'
There has been some speculation that Mr Hester's departure may have been triggered by disagreements between him and Mr Osborne, he adds.
Speaking on the BBC's Newsnight programme, Lord Myners said Mr Hester had "made it very clear he didn't really want to go now. He's going because the board has said he should go and I think they are doing the bidding of George Osborne.
"George Osborne has been increasingly at odds with Stephen Hester over the management of this bank."
Stephen Hester: "I'm content with the board's perspective on this, there is no fight"
Mr Hester will receive 12 months' pay and benefits worth £1.6m and the potential for £4m in shares.
In a statement, RBS said an "orderly succession" would allow the new CEO to oversee the re-privatisation of the bank and lead it "in the years that follow".
It said Mr Hester "was unable to make that open-ended commitment".
Lord McFall, a former chairman of the Treasury select committee, told Radio 4's the World Tonight that the announcement from RBS was "really strange".
"I would have thought if they want to privatise - and it's obvious the prime minister and the chancellor are pushing this like mad... then the person who's been there since the beginning, who picked it up when the company was a basket case and has taken it on, would be the person best fit to see to that."
Speaking to reporters on a conference call, chairman Sir Philip Hampton said the timetable, pushed by the Treasury, for the bank's return to the private sector had forced the transition.
'Bruising and difficult'
He said a new chief executive would need to be in place by early next year if the bank was to begin its return to private ownership at the end of 2014.
"The acceleration of considering succession for a CEO role arises largely from the Treasury's determination... where it can be returned to the private sector by the end of 2014," he said.
Mr Hester led the large-scale restructuring of RBS following its near collapse in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.
In a video statement released by RBS, he expressed mixed feelings about his departure.
"Of course I'd like to have stayed as I feel I've been in the trenches with all of my people helping RBS to recover, and privatisation would have been a fitting end to those endeavours," he said.
"But it has been a very bruising and difficult job so I certainly don't have to be prised away reluctantly."
Đăng ký: Tieng Anh Vui
Posted in: 
0 comments:
Post a Comment