RSA ‘slipped on an ugly banana skin in Ireland’

RSA Insurance chief Stephen Hester, who said the firm “slipped on a rather ugly banana skin in Ireland”, has announced a stock sale and tapped Warren Buffett for £550m reinsurance.

Mr Hester announced the £775m (€943m) share sale yesterday and also scrapped the dividend as he seeks to satisfy bond-rating firms. It is now “very hard for them to downgrade us,” the former RBS chief said.

Mr Hester succeeded Simon Lee, who quit in the wake of three profit warnings in the fourth quarter and a £200m capital injection into its Irish unit after an accounting probe.