Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (LON:RBS) is to pay 12,000 small business customers around £400mln in aggregate in compensation for shoddy service.
The good news for the state-owned lender is that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) largely cleared it of allegations, which first surfaced back in 2013, of deliberately driving some small business customers to the wall in order to gain a financial benefit for the bank.
Given that RBS’s management nearly drove us all to the wall trying to run its own business for a profit, one might wonder whether the FCA simply decided that RBS’s advisers in its Global Restructuring Group (GRG) were simply prescribing their own medicine.
Even if the FCA had found the advisers were behaving like utter cads, the activities of GRG were largely unregulated, so there is little the FCA could do to punish them.
Of the 12,000 customers put into GRG, around 4,000 were not viable, according to the FCA.
“Most of [the viable ones] experienced some form of inappropriate action by RBS; however, the report also concluded that, in a significant majority of cases, it was likely that inappropriate actions did not result in material financial distress to these customers,” the FCA’s report said.
Fags maker Imperial Brands PLC (LON:IMT), or IMPS as it used to be known, is apparently “delivering against its strategy”, which is odd wording.
How good would the performance have been had it been delivering in harmony with its strategy?
Still, on the day when Alice Cooper will be enjoying a massive royalty bonus from his 1972 single, “Elected”, you’ve got to love a woman – in this case IMPS’ chief executive – who was saddled with the name Alison Cooper.
“We grew the dividend by 10 per cent for the eighth consecutive year and remain committed to this level of increase over the medium term,” she said, with a commendable grip on why most investors hold shares in a tobacco products maker.
Elsewhere among Footsie constituents, while the response to the trading statement from Marks & Spencer Group PLC (LON:MKS) was lukewarm, at best, the reception to the update from Primark-owner Associated British Foods (LON:ABD) was red hot.
It is interesting to note that as Marks & Spencer reined in its international ambitions, Primark is pressing ahead with its overseas expansion, with five new stores planned for Germany; two for Italy and one for the Netherlands.
Three more stores will be opened in the north-east of the US, bringing the total to eight, and an extension to the Downtown Crossing store in Boston is planned that will increase selling space by 20%.
Let’s see if AB Foods can be the first mass retailer since … er … forever, to crack the US market.
And finally, as they used to say on the news (and possibly still do), the reaction to the decision by the makers of Toblerone to widen the gaps between the iconic triangular parts of the chocolate bar has not gone down well with fans of the airport dwellers’ favourite treat.
The idea behind the decision was to avoid putting up the price, but it seems Toblerone fans would rather pay more and enjoy “triangular chocolate, made with triangular honey from triangular bees” as it was meant to be enjoyed.
Who is the owner of Toblerone? Those shifty, serial trouble-makers Mondelēz International, the company that changed its name from Kraft Foods in the hope it would escape the shame of acquiring Cadbury’s under highly dubious circumstances.