Gordon Brown on Monday unveiled a second bank rescue package including powers for the Bank of England to lend up to £50bn directly to businesses, as he accused Royal Bank of Scotland of taking ”irresponsible risks” as the bank’s shares collapsed. His comments came as RBS on Monday warned it could report an annual loss of up to £28bn, following the mis-timed acquisition of ABN Amro, which it acquired as part of a €71bn (£63bn) hostile break-up bid in 2007. Brown said the decision to buy ABN ”was wrong”. Earlier, the UK Treasury had agreed to replace the £5bn in RBS preference shares held by the government since the October bailout with ordinary stock, increasing government ownership to almost 70%.

This entry was posted by Gwen Robinson on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 5:52 and is filed under Capital markets. Tagged with gordon brown, rbs. Edit this entry.