Royal Bank of Scotland Protecting Small Businesses
Royal Bank of Scotland, England, the second largest bank, is to ensure discovered tariffs and contracts for its customers for at least a year.
It is the first bank to promise not to withdraw its loans in an effort to ensure its 1.1 million customers to survive the recession.
The recession was first noticed around october of 2008 when a bailout plan was announced and HM Treasury bought £5 billion in RBS preference shares. The Treasury would infuse £37 billion ($64 billion, ?47 billion) of new capital into Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Lloyds TSB and HBOS Plc, to avert financial sector collapse. In the event, less than 56 million new shares were taken up by investors, or 0.24pc of the total offered by RBS in October 2008.
The move was by politicians and small businesses.
But there are fears that the pledge May to late for many companies already higher cost of borrowing.
“The company violated”
RBS, which is also owner of NatWest, was heavily influenced by the global financial crisis.
Earlier this week, shareholders voted their £ 20 billion government bail-out of taxpayers’ money.
The vote means the government could end a stake of up to 60% in the troubled bank.
The BBC”s business correspondent Joe Lynam, said the fact that a bank was a public promise to honor agreed was discovered that a measure of how bad the credit crisis has affected the normal lending practices.
Stephen Alambritis of the Federation of Small businesses (FSB), said other banks would follow.
“Now it is time for them to wake up to the fact that they were saved, so that you can turn small businesses,” he said.
“Small businesses are damaged by the way they were treated unfairly by the banks expect that the government, which now has a stake in banks to ensure that balance again.”
He said he was confident that other banks follow the lead of RBS.
“They have a great tradition of copycat tactics. Banks are like oil tankers battle – they are very slow to move, but once one of them moves, is good news,” he added.
Scottish small business like many other businesses around the globe have suffered the consequences of the credit crunch so taking this inconsideration the Royal Bank of Scotland has taken the initiative to make sure that many local small businesses won”t go under and that the tough financial stress won”t create a catastrophic collapse that will hurt the local economy.
Small business credit and consumer credit are the life and blood of any financial system so it is the duty of those in charge, in this case the Royal Bank of Scotland, to step up and protect their assets and the future and financial solvency of small business that just like many others are struggling to make ends meet at the end of the day.
To learn more about business in Scotland and to find great business resources visit our Scottish Business Directory at http://www.weeboab.co.uk