A boardroom purge at the troubled bank will soon begin, according to reports.
There is to be a radical overhaul of the board of RBS, after the bank suffered another week of turmoil on the markets.
Five directors, including BP chairman Peter Sutherland, are likely to step down soon, the Sunday Times reports. The departures would follow that of Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of the bank who left last year.
RBS is one of the global financial firms hardest hit by the credit crunch and has been the single biggest recipient of UK government aid through bank bailout plans. It sold an equity stake worth £20 billion, or 60 percent of the bank, to the taxpayer under the terms of the first Treasury rescue package in October 2008 - a stake that grew to 70 percent in the latest bailout announced last Monday.
Investors took last week's move from the government as a signal that RBS would soon be nationalised - and the bank's share price dropped by over 65 percent on Monday as a consequence. The stock then barely rose for the rest of the week.
Poor decisions at boardroom level have been blamed for the currently parlous state of RBS. Specifically, the decision to take part in a takeover of Dutch bank ABN Amro in mid-2007 - leaving the RBS balance sheet overstretched at the onset of the credit crunch - has been seen as a major blunder.
Changes in directors are expected to be made when Sir Philip Hampton assumes his post as chairman of the bank. The government, as majority shareholder, will have a say in the new appointments.
Around 30,000 jobs are also thought likely to be lost as the bank restructures, in addition to the 10,000 redundancies that have already been made.
