RBS: Citizens Bank Not For Sale

Published November 3, 2009 UPDATED 4:32 PM

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After speculation that Massachusetts customers of Citizens Bank could find their bank under new ownership, the bank’s parent company, the Royal Bank of Scotland, said it would keep Citizens Financial Group.

Providence, R.I.-based Citizens is a highly profitable $153 billion commercial bank holding company that employs about 24,000 people. It’s also the second-largest retail bank in Massachusetts, after Bank of America.

On Monday, RBS said negotiations over the bank’s bailout terms with the British Treasury and the European Commission were “in their final stages, and will include some divestments not initially contemplated.” That led to speculation that Citizens would have to be sold to pay off its bailout from the British Treasury.

John Carusone of the Bank Analysis Center in Hartford, Ct., said the valuable bank would have been attractive to banks from the Midwest to Maine. “There’s no shortage of well-capitalized community banks that covet Citizens’ locations,” he said. “They’d be delighted to bid for 15 or 20 branches at a time.”

RBS reportedly negotiated hard with European regulators to keep its U.S. operations as a part of its core business.

“Today’s announcement once again affirms that Citizens Financial Group is a valued part of the RBS Group,” Citizens’ CEO Ellen Alemany said. “We will continue to serve the needs of our customers and execute on our long-term strategic plan.”

Bank analyst John Carusone said the pressure is now on RBS to successfully navigate the international economy, credit quality and bank regulators to avoid having to put Citizens on the block after all.

Your Comments

I agree with akilez, I too was robbed by Citizens Bank. I have a checking and a saving account with Citizens Bank. I made a withdraw on the ATM, the ATM allowed me to take the money, little did I know it was overdrawn, but first, the ATM didn’t tell I had insufficient fund in my checking account, secondly, I have plenty of money in my saving account to cover it, (it was only overdraw by $5.00) My other bank has a protection which will do it automatically, but not Citizens Bank. They slammed me with a $22.00 overdraft fee, to top that, two days later, they charged me another $35.00 on what they called “Service Charge Sustained Overdraft Fee”, so my $5.00 overdraw costed me $57.00. No wonder Citizens Bank is profitable for RBS, they are thieves just like the other greedy bankers. So caveat emptor, when you deal with banks, it’s like walking in a mine field, you never know when you are going to be trapped!!!

Posted by rich on November 4, 2009, at 12:26 PM
This bank like any other bank is robbing the POOR and giving to the Rich people. Okay try to Overdraft your debit card by a Penny and this bank will charge you $37.00 overdraft fees.
Credit card only charge $25.00 for Overdraft or don’t charge you at all but Banks like Citizen and other banks make this world a more corrupt than ever before.
AIG, Subprime mortages,Lehman Bros etc etc. These are the institution that make this world so evil and greedy.

If you have low credit score they raise monthly payments.
Which I still don’t understand.

Well, What can we do nothing because Banks control the world economy. I hope Banks don’t start selling weapons to third world countries to make more profit.

The World Indeed. Banks is the root of all evil.

Posted by akilez on November 3, 2009, at 11:33 AM

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