RBS facing more legal action over restructuring unit

RBS is facing yet more legal action – this time over the activities of its controversial Global Restructuring Group.

Small businesses are launching a £1 billion legal case against RBS, claiming they were destroyed and asset-stripped by the unit that was supposed to save them.

The 140 companies signed up to the action say they were pushed into administration by RBS’s global restructuring group so the bank could use their assets to pay down its debts.

They have also accused the City watchdog of sitting on a report into the GRG, which it says is not yet finished.

The businesses had intended to wait for this to be published before acting, but have said they cannot hold on any longer.

Active during the financial crisis, the GRG was meant to help struggling firms stay afloat. But it has been alleged that the group deliberately sought to sink them instead.

In 2013, a report by Government-backed entrepreneur Lawrence Tomlinson, argued that executives at many companies were ‘forced to stand by and watch an otherwise-successful business be sunk by the decisions of the bank’.

RBS denies the allegations.