Ongoing problems at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) have seen the lender slip from first to second place in the western Europe tables. The bank closed 2010 with a $1.47bn loss and a Tier 1 capital of $94bn, 24% smaller than the previous year. RBS, which had to be rescued by the UK government during the financial crisis and which is still in tax-payers’ hands, is the only bank in the top 25 western European banks to have closed the year in the red.
The region’s strongest bank is HSBC with $133.18bn in Tier 1 capital, a figure that the bank has increased by 9% since last year. HSBC’s pre-tax profits were $19bn, the largest in the region (almost three times the average value of pre-tax profits of the top 25 banks in western Europe) and a 169% growth from the 2009 results.