For private equity firms hoping to get hard-to-find financing for deals, there's one less place for them to turn. Tucked into the Royal Bank of Scotland's announcement of a $34.2 billion annual loss - the largest in British corporate history - was word that the partially nationalized firm was gettin...

Gordon Brown suffered a double blow yesterday when government statisticians recalculated Britain's national debt at £1.5tn and the CBI accused the prime minister of lacking a coherent economic recovery strategy. As the prime minister warned in Rome that the world was being hit by an "economic hurri...

The government's rescue of some of Britain's biggest banks will push up the national debt by as much as £1.5 trillion, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced this morning. Alongside a grim assessment of the state of the public finances - which suggests Alistair Darling's borrowing forec...

Gordon Brown's claims to have clamped down on executive bonuses at the majority government-owned RBS were challenged last night when it appeared the deal would include not just 2008 cash payouts for executives worth £175m, but probably as much as £600m in deferred benefits. The prime minister was ...

As banking heavyweights like Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group topple like dominos it is easy to forget Northern Rock the Newcastlebased middleweight with which the crisis began....

Lloyds could be forced to write off a further swath of loans made by HBOS to hundreds of companies, after figures showed many of the loans are worth only a fraction of their original value. The troubled bank has made huge loans to commercial property developers, hotel chains and leisure companies, a...

Zara Phillips, Andy Murray and a glittering array of other sports stars hired by Royal Bank of Scotland to be its "global ambassadors" should volunteer to scrap their contracts, a member of the treasury select committee argued last night. The horse riding granddaughter of the Queen and the top-ranki...

Loud were the snorts from RBS staff as they watched the men who had led their bank to ruin make their excuses to MPs. Although the press described the "humiliation" of Sir Tom McKillop, the former chairman, and Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive, insiders knew the pair had got away with mu...

The Royal Bank of Scotland infuriated unions tonight by announcing plans to cut 2,300 jobs only hours after its former chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin had publicly apologised for the Edinburgh-based bank's downfall. At a packed meeting of the Treasury select committee of MPs, Goodwin had been joine...

Bankers would face a £25,000 cap on cash bonuses under plans being examined by the Treasury last night in a bid to silence the public outcry over the City's culture of huge rewards and dangerous risk-taking. But the move to stifle growing anger over bonuses at the Royal Bank of Scotland was in dang...