Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) chairman Philip Hampton said yesterday that the bank will shed more jobs globally after already axing 2,700 roles in Britain this year, as it looks to recover from the financial crisis.
“In the UK this year so far we have announced around 2,700 posts will go. We can only be honest and say that this will not be the end of the story and more are expected in the UK and internationally in the period ahead,” Hampton said in a speech he was to give at the bank’s annual general meeting later yesterday.
Extracts of the speech were posted on the London Stock Exchange newswire service ahead of the meeting.
The gathering in Edinburgh is expected to be extremely fraught, with shareholders set to vote against a huge payoff to RBS’ disgraced former chief executive Fred Goodwin.
RBS is among the British lenders worst affected by the credit crunch.
It is 70 percent owned by the British government after a massive bailout and posted a loss of more than £24 billion (US$35 billion) last year — the biggest in Britain’s corporate history.
As well shedding billions of pounds in write-offs linked to the collapse of the US housing market, RBS also suffered fallout from its costly and mis-timed takeover of Dutch lender ABN Amro.
“The past is done, we cannot change it. We must recognize what has happened and why, identify lessons and learn them,” said Hampton, who replaced Tom McKillop in February.
“Many difficult decisions lie ahead ... Chief among these will be the need to achieve the annual cost reduction targets of £2.5 billion that we have set within the next three years,” the new chairman said.
Ahead of yesterday’s meeting, UK Financial Investments (UKFI), which oversees the British government’s bank holdings, said it would vote against RBS’ salaries report in protest at Goodwin’s payoff.
UKFI said that while it fully supported current policy at RBS, it would vote against its past Remuneration Report which includes a pension for Goodwin worth nearly US$1 million a year.
The payoff for Goodwin has sparked a storm of protest in Britain — and his home has been attacked — after the government was forced to pour billions of pounds into RBS to save it from collapse last year.
Goodwin, 50, has refused repeated government requests to voluntarily give up part of his pension, insisting that it was properly done and cleared.
“I do understand that many shareholders will wish to vote against or abstain on the advisory vote on the Remuneration Report to register their strong disapproval of the pension arrangements of our former chief executive,” Hampton said yesterday.
“Clearly, this is an issue of significant political and public concern and we all fully understand that. Legal advice is being taken about whether the decision that was reached can be revisited,” he said.
Last month vandals attacked Goodwin’s home in Edinburgh. Police said Goodwin — nicknamed “Fred The Shred” for his costcutting reputation — was not in the property at the time of the attack and no one was injured.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS