No relief for RBS investors

RBS, Britain’s remaining semi-nationalised bank, has just paid a special dividend – but shareholders are anything but happy. Matthew Partridge reports.

Ross McEwan, CEO of RBS © Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Ross McEwan: no successor has yet been named
(Image credit: Ross McEwan, CEO of RBS © Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

On Friday, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) announced that it had made £2bn in net profit, its "best result for more than a decade", reports Sean Farrell in The Guardian. As a result, it will pay a total of £1.7bn in dividends for the first half of its financial year, partly funded by the sale of a stake in a Saudi Arabian bank. It's only the second time that shareholders have received money since the end of 2007. Naturally, the biggest winner will be the government, which will receive around £1bn, thanks to the fact that it still owns 62% of RBS.

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Dr Matthew Partridge
Shares editor, MoneyWeek

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri