RBS drops out of global top 500 list as Standard Life makes comeback

Fortune magazine’s latest Global 500 listing shows a changing of the guard for Scotland’s financial heavyweights, with RBS likely to slump further as it continues its post-bailout cost-cutting scale down.

But while still more than 70 per cent state-owned RBS continues to count the cost of the pre-crisis excess that propelled it into Fortune’s top 100, as well as the scandals that have followed, Standard Life is set to maintain its current upward trajectory.

And with mega merger with Aberdeen Asset Management imminent, that is sure to add yet more fuel to its ascent.

RBS had slipped to 361st place in the previous year’s table, already a major slip from the days of its top 100 position during the peak of worldwide expansion under disgraced former chief executive Fred Goodwin.

In contrast, the latest list puts Standard Life in 432nd place.

Companies within the Forture Global 500 are ranked by total revenues for their respective financial years ending on or before 31 March, 2017.

The listings, which are dominated by US and Asian corporate giants, also examine profits, assets and employee numbers.