£9.2bn profits for Royal Bank of Scotland

Royal Bank of Scotland, which owns NatWest and Churchill Insurance, unveiled sharply higher annual profits of £9.19bn (€29.5bn) today.

The surplus from the UK’s second largest banking group compared with a figure of £7.94bn (€11.7bn) from a year earlier. The performance was also ahead of market expectations.

RBS pointed out it was one of only five FTSE 100 Index companies to have grown profits in each of the last 10 years, adding that less than £1 in £33 of profit growth came from retail banking.