LONDON: Royal Bank of Scotland pledged Monday to pay up to $1.0 billion (950 million euros) to settle cases linked to a controversial 2008 shares sale conducted just before its state bailout.
RBS, which is still 73 percent owned by the British government, said in a statement it has reached a "final settlement" with three out of the five investor groups bringing compensation claims against it over the matter.
The Edinburgh-based lender has offered to pay up to #800 million to resolve all the compensation claims, but it remains in discussions with the two other groups.
The sum -- which is covered by its existing provisions -- represented 77 percent of the claims by value in the litigation.
"In order to minimise further material litigation expense and management distraction and without any admission of liability, RBS has concluded a full and final settlement" with the three groups, it said in the statement.
"Any claims for which settlement is not achieved will, however, continue to be vigorously defended. The trial for such claims is due to commence in March 2017."
RBS had launched a vast #12-billion rights issue in 2008 to shore up its balance sheet after its disastrous consortium takeover of Dutch bank ABN Amro at the top of the market.
However, the deal proved to be toxic, and just months later RBS was part-nationalised by the British government with #45.5 billion of taxpayers' cash at the height of the global financial crisis.
"We have been very clear that we wanted to deal with as many of our legacy litigation issues as possible during 2015 and 2016," said Chief Executive Ross McEwan on Monday.
"We are pleased to have reached this agreement and hope that it will be accepted by the remaining claimant groups so that this long course of complex and costly litigation can now be concluded."
Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2016
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