Report by banking regulator into the events that led to RBS bailout was due in March
City grandee Sir David Walker has been called in to break the deadlock over the publication of a Financial Services Authority report into what went wrong at Royal Bank of Scotland.
A formal announcement on the appointment of Walker and another senior City figure is expected on Thursday, following pressure from politicians for publication of a report that was scheduled for released in March. Walker has previously presided over reviews of the private equity business and of corporate governance failures in banks at the time of the financial meltdown.
Concern that the bailed-out RBS could be left vulnerable to litigation and the need for approval from former directors of the bank have delayed publication of the report, which is also expected to see the FSA admitting it could have regulated the bank more effectively.
Lord Turner, the chairman of the FSA, was forced into a promise to publish a report into RBS after the regulator announced last year that it was not intending to take any regulatory action against any of the bank's former directors – including RBS's former chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin, who resigned at the time of the £45bn taxpayer bailout.
The FSA commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers to analyse the events that led to the RBS bailout, and on closing the investigation in December, blamed bad decisions rather than dishonesty for the bank's problems. However, it took public outcry and political pressure to prompt the promise of a formal report, which is yet to materialise..
A former banker, Walker produced a report for the Labour government which recommended, among other things, that there should be more disclosure on bankers' pay. But, as the current government backtracked from his proposals to publish all pay deals over a £1m, he said that he felt there needed to be international agreement before such rules were introduced.
On Tuesday, business secretary Vince Cable said his department wanted the report published in the "public interest".