Royal Bank of Scotland said the bank and its former bosses may have made bad decisions but that does not mean they misled investors or acted illegally.
A statement outlining its case was issued last night as the bank prepared to lodge its defence against a £4 billion lawsuit from shareholders.
The Royal Bank of Scotland Shareholder Action Group is suing the bank and four ex-directors on behalf of institutions and private shareholders, alleging they were misled over the bank's strength in a rights issue prospectus months before RBS almost collapsed.
Fred Goodwin, the disgraced former RBS chief executive ousted at the time of the Government bailout, is among directors accused.
"While RBS and its former directors made some business decisions that have been criticised, this does not mean that they misled investors or acted illegally," RBS said in a statement.
"We believe we have strong defences to the claims that are being brought against the group and that is why we intend to defend these vigorously."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article