RBS pays heavily for Ulster Bank bailout

Royal Bank of Scotland Group has channelled the equivalent of almost a third of its £45.5bn (€53.6bn) government rescue into bailing out Ulster Bank after property loans soured.

Ulster Bank received a £2.93bn capital injection from its parent last year, bringing the total since 2009 to £14.3bn, according to filings lodged by the Dublin-based lender at the Companies Registration Office in the past week. David Gaffney, a spokesman for RBS, confirmed the figures.

The lender, acquired by RBS in 2000, doubled its assets to £55bn in the four years before Ireland’s property bubble burst, according to a report published in 2011 by the UK Financial Services Authority. While Ulster Bank accounted for only 3% of RBS’s assets in 2007, it has generated almost €13bn of bad loan losses, filings show.