LONDON (AP) — Taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland took a
whopping 8.2 billion-pound ($13.7 billion) pre-tax loss for 2013 as it
announced a new plan Thursday to transform itself, streamlining the bank
to make it smaller and safer.
Chief Executive Ross McEwan said
RBS will now focus on Britain, signaling a rollback from the global
ambitions the institution held before the onset of the financial crisis.
In a somber speech in London, McEwan pledged he would do the "hard
graft" to regain the trust of its customers.
"So let me spell it
out very clearly: the days when RBS sought to be the biggest bank in the
world — those days are well and truly over," McEwan said. "Our ambition
is to be a bank for U.K. customers, the best bank for U.K. customers. A
bank that gets the basics of everyday banking right."
British
taxpayers rescued RBS in 2008 with a 45 billion-pound ($71 billion)
capital injection after former swash-buckling CEO Fred Goodwin brought
the bank to near-collapse with an aggressive global expansion strategy
that included the ill-fated purchase of Dutch lender ABN Amro. The
public owns just over 80 percent of the institution.
"It has been a real shock how much time it is taking to turn it round," he told the BBC.
McEwan
pledged he will revive the bank by making it "smaller, simpler and
smarter" and have it shrink from seven divisions to three. British media
have reported that as many as one-quarter of the bank’s 120,000 strong
workforce could lose their jobs.
"We are the least trusted company
in the least trusted sector of the economy," McEwan said. "That must
change. So the goal of my plan is very simple: We have to be a bank that
earns your trust."
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