Royal Bank of Scotland PLC’s (LON:RBS) former chief financial officer has been accused of being responsible for the mistreatment of small businesses under the bank’s global restructuring group (GRG).
Nathan Bostock, who left RBS in August 2014 to become the chief executive of Santander UK, was named in the scandal in the House of Commons on Thursday by former business secretary Vince Cable.
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The Liberal Democrat leader quoted a passage from a damning report by the Financial Conduct Authority into GRG, stating “management knew, or should have known, that this was an intended and co-ordinated strategy and that the mistreatment of business customers was a result of that”.
Cable used parliamentary privilege to name Bostock as “responsible for that policy” during his tenure as head of restructuring and risk from June 2009 until October 2013 when he was prompted to the role of CFO.
“If the reported passage from the full report is correct, then questions have to be raised over the management who were responsible for GRG,” Cable said.
“The FCA must also then disclose who they think is responsible.”
FCA urged to publish full findings into RBS
He joined calls for the FCA to publish its full report into the conduct of GRG, which allegedly profited from the struggles of small firms.
The financial watchdog had published a summary of its report last autumn, which accused RBS of “widespread inappropriate treatment” of smaller companies.
Many of the 16,000 small business clients put into GRG between 2008 and 2013 collapsed.
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Labour MP Clive Lewis had called for the public debate in parliament on Thursday.
He said the alleged misconduct at GRG was possibly the “largest theft anywhere, ever” and the unit was “more like an abattoir” where firms were ripped apart.
The debate came after the Treasury committee published a memo sent to GRG staff in 2009 and released to MPs, referring to its small business clients as “basket cases” and stated that “sometimes you need to let customers hang themselves".