Banker Tim Noble, former leader of Noble Group and now an influential non-executive in the sector, said: “My fear is that in 50 years’ time there could be no Scottish financial services sector, and people will be saying ‘why did we lose it?’ I think what has happened to the two banks over the last couple of years is it means we must put much more effort into creating new financial institutions.”
Reopening the row over the perceived headquarters of Royal Bank of Scotland and the former HBOS, Noble said: “We have lost most of the life insurance sector, now we have lost the head office of the Bank of Scotland, and although it has barely been reported, Stephen Hester never comes to Scotland and has moved key executives to London.”
RBS chief executive Hester told MSPs last month there was “a very clear policy that the bank is headquartered in Scotland”. He added more recently that the “preponderance of” board meetings were held in Edinburgh.
But Noble said: “Fred Goodwin’s old office is now occupied by 15 people. Without any takeover, UKFI has allowed the Royal Bank to move its head office from Scotland to London, which is horrifying, and it will be very difficult to move it all back up again.
“It will make it difficult to start again as you won’t have the quality of bank executives in Scotland. It is important to create acorns for the future, and I am involved in trying to see if that can be possible.”
Owen Kelly, chief executive of Scottish Financial Enterprise, commented: “Both Lloyds and RBS have been as clear as they possibly can about their commitment to Scotland.”
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