£20k billboard in London calls for RBS investigation
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) seems to keep receiving grief from critics, who have called it out on its restructuring and are calling for a further investigation into the lender.
The controversial billboard.
These criticisms are so fervent that Neil Mitchell, a Scottish businessman, has paid four months up front on a £5,000 a month billboard in Croydon, south London, which reproaches the bank’s wrongdoings.
The billboard shows a fake newspaper with the RBS and Natwest logo dripping blood, and says these banks have caused “austerity, suicides, bank’s crimes, economic destruction”.
According to The Guardian, the billboard is booked until December 2019, with an option to extend it for the whole of 2020.
Mitchell, CEO of software firm Torex Retail, seems quite happy with this expense.
He has even filed a legal application so the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) takes action over the mistreatment of the bank’s small and medium-sized business customers at its now-defunct Global Restructuring Group (GRG).
So far, Mitchell says that this application, filed in October 2018, has 530 complainants on board.
The FCA claims all these actions fall outside its jurisdiction, as commercial lending is unregulated in the UK.
According to Mitchell and other GRG victims, the bank’s arm pushed them to failure and stripped them of assets.
Mitchell claims GRG conspired to push Torex Retail into administration before selling it off at a discount price in 2007.
