RBS still hopes to reach US settlement in 2018

Ross McEwan

Royal Bank of Scotland is still hoping to reach a multi-billion-dollar settlement this year with the US Justice Department over alleged mis-selling of toxic mortgage-backed securities.

RBS CEO Ross McEwan told a conference in London the bank still has no news on the timing of any deal.

“I’ve got the timing of this completely wrong for the last 15 months, I thought we would’ve had it tidied by end-2017… all I’d say (is) it will be in hopefully in 2018,” McEwan told the Morgan Stanley European Financials conference.

The expected settlement would be a milestone for taxpayer-owned RBS, allowing it to resume paying dividends to shareholders and paving the way for the UK government to resume selling its roughly 70% equity stake in RBS.