Page 22 - RBS GRG F Case Study

2016 BuzzFeed &

BBC Newsnight

In October, 2016 a cache

of confidential documents

were passed, by a

whistleblower, to BuzzFeed News and BBC Newsnight,

which supported the allegations made in the 2013,

Tomlinson Report. Essentially, that RBS secretly tried to

profit from struggling businesses by buying their assets
cheaply as a deliberate plan to add billions of pounds to

its balance sheet, whilst claiming publicly to be helping
them.

More than 12,000

companies were pushed

into RBS’ GRG Division

especially in the aftermath

of the 2008 financial crisis.

Some of these companies

were subjected to GRG

simply for falling out with the bank or indicating that they

were thinking of changing bank.

“The internal documents starkly contradict the bank’s

public insistence that GRG acted as an “intensive care

unit” for ailing firms, tasked with restructuring their loan

agreements to “help them back to health”. (25)