RBS apologises after misleading select committee

Royal Bank of Scotland has been forced to issue a grovelling apology for “incorrect” evidence given by two of its senior employees at a parliamentary committee hearing earlier this year.

In yet another blow to the majority state-owned bank’s reputation, the Treasury Select Committee has released a letter from Sir Philip Hampton in which the RBS chairman admits that it was “not correct” for Chris Sullivan and Derek Sach to insist in June that the bank’s Global Restructuring Group (GRG) was not being run as a “profit centre”.

The GRG, which is being wound down, has been accused of driving viable small firms into default so that RBS could boost profits.

Sir Andrew Large, in an independent review of RBS’s small lending operations in 2013, described the GRG as an “internal profit centre”. But in June Mr Sullivan, the bank’s deputy chief executive, told MPs that GRG is “absolutely not a profit centre”, and Mr Sach, who ran the GRG, said Sir Andrew had got it wrong in his report when he described the unit in such terms.

Sir Philip’s letter, which was sent in August, agrees that Sir Andrew’s definition was “reasonable and correct”, adding “that is the answer the committee should have received and I am sorry that they did not”.