RBS public shareholders meeting

IssueJune 2010
News by Sarah Young

Public shareholders of RBS put the case for sustainable investment at the bank’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Edinburgh on 28 April. Since the bank bailout in 2008 the UK government owns 84% of RBS shares, effectively taking the bank into public ownership.

However, the public who amassed outside Edinburgh International Conference Centre, many suited and booted for the occasion, held their meeting from behind police barriers.

The meeting was supported by the World Development Movement, Friends of the Earth, People & Planet, Amnesty International and Scottish Education and Action for Development, along with friends from UNISON who were also visible in the crowd.

No doubt the uniformed, camera- wielding cops who were also present snapped some new faces for their latest albums.

A succession of speakers described RBS’s investments in environmentally-destructive developments. Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, an indigenous Canadian activist, spoke out against the tar sands (oil extraction) projects funded by the bank.

Representatives of the campaigning coalition who organised the public shareholders’ meeting did get to put their case to RBS’s chair, Phillip Hampton. But the biggest reception came from the public shareholders.

See more of: Scotland