Spot on - if the PGs are unsupported then the bank can really only see them as a tool to keep the guarantors committed to the business. The bank won't actually consider them to be of significant financial value.

Hood claims that RBS still have security value in the "land & buildings" - realistically he will see the majority of this value to be the main stand and the hospitality block. From the bank's perspective, they will consider two key factors when working out how much security value these actually provide. First is how easy it would be to sell these assets and second is how much money they would raise.

In a doomsday scenario, given that the RFL own the land RBS may not even be able to get easy access to the land in order to claim possession of the buildings. Even if they could, unless there is a buyer moving into Odsal the value of the buildings would be severely reduced because there'd be a substantial cost in dismantling the buildings to sell of the main parts (such as the plastic seating).

It's exactly the same scenario that Wakefield's bankers had to consider after the land was sold leaving the "Benidorm flats" as an asset within the debenture. The club's management at the time considered these to have a value of something like £750k, but once their bank had taken "disposal costs" into account the security value as considered to be less than £50k.

All very well, but the Coral stand wasn't built yesterday, and if it was the disposal of the head lease that upset RBS then they seem to have got upset over something that viewed at from ANYBODY's angle was worth in actual cash terms jack schitt. It is my experience of banks at this level that the bean-counters who decide a business's fate really not only have NO CLUE how a business operates, but actually don't care, not in the slightest, they go entirely 100% by numbers, there is no talking to them, and if their decisions mean they take a massive hit, when by supporting a business they may have not done, that is of zero importance to them. They punch their numbers into whatever number machine they use, it tells them what to do, they do it like Pavlov's bleedin dogs.

The irony of the fact that they have history for ruining thousands of small businesses in precisely this way whilst trading hopelessly insolvently themselves and but for us taxpayers, going spectacularly to the wall, is lost on them.

To those banking apologists who are making woeful excuses about how the banks in these days post-banking crash need to "tighten up on lending" - what planet are you on? Do you actually believe that the banking crash had even 0.0000005% to do with mismanaged lending to small businesses??? FFS. And here's a case in point; unless benefactors can unfeasibly raise a million pounds or so to pay off debts, the Bulls will fold, and the bank, which would otherwise have continued to make money from the Bulls for the foreseeable, will do its bollox in on the deal. And this - even if you don't factor in the negative value of the appalling publicity for RBS if they collapse a hundred year old community sports club - to me just shows how out of touch with reality they are, and how they really are not in the slightest bit interested in the business, or in the wider picture. Utter ba5tard5, I detest them.

Not sure which is 'head office' and which is subsidiary but I'm sure they are the same outfit.

As someone who had a very similar experience with the same branch of the same bank last autumn and had it not been for the fact that I could quickly access some emergency funds, would have been on the streets. I wholeheartedly echo those sentiments.

They weren't in the slightest bit interested in how successful my business was, the fact that I asked to extend a facility was enough for them to decide to withdraw it.

Natwest was bought by RBS some years ago.

So basically selling the Odsal lease was a mistake as the bank sorts their overdraft length (and amount of money loaned out) based on what assets the club has, so in theory we sold our biggest assets to the RFL, the bank saw us selling this big asset and reduced our overdraft as we didn't have that asset anymore?

For about the hundredth time, there is no way the Odsal lease from the council was ever any significant asset for security purposes. Ask RBS how much they believe a liquidator could have realised it for?

So why did the bank reduce our overdraft? Dumb it down please because tbh i dont understand whats been written before. Sorry for being a nuciense (sp) :/

basically used it as an opportunity to reduce the banks exposure. banks dont like sports clubs in general. see them as a big potential risk.

Ah okay cheers

So would a protest outside NatWest do any good? I'm free all week...

For this I don't criticise you, but you are making the very naive if understandable mistake of thinking that there would have to be a sound, sensible and reasonable reason for a bank to take a drastic step. The fact is, banks are not like that. At all. they are cold hearted, cynical, calculating basstards, only out for themselves, they all trouser a few million a year and screw me and you. And they often do things which any decent person would find both inexplicable and shameful.

you would hope that if we get through the next few weeks the club will be finding a new bank and not giving RBS anymore business.

Probably not, but if a few hundred Bulls fans disrupting their business at one branch for one day, and any adverse publicity we could get them, caused a bit of consternation and discomfiture for them then perhaps there's a bit of satisfaction to be had.

Re-banking in present circumstances might be hard.

Basically, the club says they has no idea why. And, from my understanding of the situation, neither do I.

My own opinion is that the bank is widely-known for looking to shrink its balance sheet and further de-risk its lending, and that basically means reducing its lending to all but the strongest businesses. And I suspect the bank was looking for an excuse to do what one of its senior guys told me some years ago it was seeking to do: get out of lending to RL clubs.

With all due respect to the bankers who post on here, IMO the attitude of the banks at the moment towards any degree of commercial risk whatsoever is the biggest single impediment to our economic recovery. Having wrecked the country (with the gleeful acquiescence of Gordon Brown) through e.g. their reckless lending to Russian oligarchs and the like in the past, and their reckless purchase of foreign banks at far more than they were worth, they are now going to jolly well show all the small businesses in their own back yard what responsible lenders they are.

But...we taxpayers are stuck with owning most of RBS, since Goodwin and his fellow bandits ruined it and us with it (why he has not been shot for high treason escapes me...) so we have a problem. You hear the howls about will the taxpayer ever get its money back for the billions RBS cost us - not least from those on whose watch the disaster happened. Well, the less risky its loan book is, the more it is worth. And the government is of course desperate to be able to sell at least some of its holding - OUR holding - off to reduce the need for spending cuts and tax increases. And how do you make the loan book less risky...?

True, I am 17 so I'll be honest I'm still learning and understanding the whole bank process thing

But I do thank you and Adeybull and Mat for clearing things up for me

Sadly, so were Goodwin and all the other vermin who were in charge of the banks when their actions were destroying our future.

... only ever lend money to people who have absolutely no need whatsoever for a loan?

Incidentally, never forget that, as well as wrecking the country, destroying our future and starving small businesses of funding, thereby choking off any chance of decent economic growth, the actions of those vermin resulted in tens of thousands of totally innocent bank employees losing their jobs.

Don't sit on the fence Adey. Say what you mean...

And millions of other non-bank employees.

NatWest is 100% owned by RBS.

But to assume its the same thing is wrong as I found out last week, you cannot for instance, pay cash over a NatWest counter into an RBS account, which doesn't seem logical to me but made perfect sense to the counter clerk.

Remember Natwest are the place for "helpful banking".

Its becuase they work on different teller platforms so cant physically do it. You can pay cqs in though as they are posted off.

Whilst wholly owned by RBS, NW are a seperate bank, and in the case of the Bulls, will have a seperate credit policy than the RBS branches. You will find, going forward, that the RBS branches that you see now on the high street, will soon become Santander so the restriction that RBS as a group have, may be somewhat different.