28-02-2008
RBS reports annual profits rise
News by Adfero for Simply Business - independent providers of public liability insurance, business finance, landlord insurance, buy-to-let mortgages & commercial mortgages.
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has reported a rise in profits. The owner of NatWest has reported pre-tax profits for 2007 of £9.9 billion, an increase of £0.7 billion on the previous year.
Meanwhile, across the whole group, including ABN Amro, operating profit levels increased to £10.3 billion, a rise of nine per cent. RBS also announced an increase to its dividend payments of ten per cent. "These results have been held back by the second half credit market deterioration, which led our global banking & markets division to incur writedowns on its US mortgage-related and leveraged finance exposures," said RBS, in a report by the BBC.
The writedowns specified by RBS came to a total of £2.14 billion - higher than the approximated total of around £1.25 billion announced by the bank in December 2007 and caused by exposure to the US domestic mortgage market. RBS has a history going back to 1727.