FCA refuses to publish full RBS GRG report

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has refused to publish in full a leaked report into the scandal at RBS’s Global Restructuring Group.

The financial watchdog said publishing it would risk revealing confidential information.

The statement follows last week’s news that the report, which reportedly accuses RBS of mistreating businesses - claims the bank denies - had been leaked to the BBC.

The leak prompted Treasury Select Committee chair Nicky Morgan MP to demand its full release to the public.

However, the FCA has instead said it will publish a summary of the report’s findings, verified by external lawyers.

But Ms Morgan said the case to publish the full report was “overwhelming”.

Last week her calls were joined by a group of MPs who called RBS’s treatment of business customers an “ugly stain” on the UK financial services industry.

Mrs Morgan wrote directly to Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the City watchdog, demanding the handing over of its findings on the conduct of RBS’s Global Restructuring Group after a leaked document appeared to disclose that investigators have found “inappropriate action” was experienced by 92 per cent of its customers.

Accusations have long been levelled at 73 per cent state-owned RBS that it purposely pushed small businesses into financial hardship so they could be put into the GRG where they could be asset stripped.

According to the BBC, the leaked document states that struggling companies who were placed in the recovery group, which operated between 2005 and 2013 and at its peak handled 16,000 firms, had little chance of emerging from it.

The findings of an investigation into the affair was originally to be published in 2015.

Then, the FCA told the Treasury select committee in November last year that a ‘full account’ of the findings from the skilled persons’ investigation into the GRG would be published.

“Nearly a year later, and nearly four years since the report was commissioned, we are still waiting for answers,” Morgan wrote in her letter. “The report itself is now in the hands of an unknown number of third parties. The FCA now has no control over the timing or content of further public disclosures from it.

“The balance has tipped firmly in favour of full publication. I have written to Mr Bailey to urge him to secure the approval of RBS to do so, without delay.”

Announcing the FCA’s refusal to disclose the report in full, chief executive Andrew Bailey said such reports were “not intended for public view”, as individuals had not had the opportunity to “see or comment on adverse comments” about them.

“However, I recognise that the public interest justifies greater disclosure of material.

“It is therefore our intention to publish a detailed summary of the … report.”

Responding to today’s news, Ms Morgan said her committee had been overwhelmed by messages from former customers whose businesses were “destroyed” by the RBS unit.

She said: “The committee recognises that such reports are not intended for publication, and should in normal circumstances remain confidential.

“But the report is now in the hands of an unknown number of third parties.

“If closure is ever to be brought to this long-running issue, parliament and the public need the account ordered by the regulator.

“And so we consider that the public interest in publication in this specific case is overwhelming.”

RBS is understood to be investigating the source of leak, which is just the latest of many after successive delays in the publication of the report.