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.

There's a geographical split - In Scotland the RBS branches remain whilst the NatWest branches are sold to Santander . In England the opposite. More crucially, if you don't do anything about it, if your branch is sold to Santander, your account goes with it. It will also mean there will be ?5 Santander branches in Bradford City centre. How many job losses when they are "restructured"?

Santander have been well documented in the financial pages of different papers with customers complaining about missing accounts and also accounts with unauthorised withdrawals and Santander refuse to act till the papers get involved. It's a dodgy Spanish Bank from a Country with a similar Greek economy, no way should any one use them.

As a customer of ShatWest, at no point have I been asked if I want to move to Santander. Another example of their customer service.
I'm closing my account this aft, I'm quite looking forward to it now!

There has to be more to this than is currently in the public domain. It is obvious the club was having financial problems otherwise there would have been no need to do the lease deal with the RFL or seek an increase in an already large bank overdraft. If a company cannot pay all its bills within a reasonable timescale then it is insolvent. If tax bills were overdue with insufficient income then perhaps the bank knew winding up petitions were inevitable.

If this were the case and the company business plan was not credible for these difficult economic times then though regretable the bank would have no option but to protect its shareholders (in this case the tax payers) by calling in/reducing the overdraft facility.

What needs to be made clear is that if the company had funds to reduce the overdraft (and so reduce the directors personal liabilities) then why had they not already paid the outstanding tax bills? Funny smell?

NatWest is staying as part of RBS, effectively the face of RBS in England and Wales.Its the RBS branches themsleves which have been sold to Santander as a sanction by the EU on the bailed out bank to sell a profitable arm of its business to create more competition. Whilst it may look on paper that by Santnder buying the 314 branches isnt creating competition, in fact it is as Santander have a small Private banking and Commercial / coorprate banking market share. The purchse of the branch network and the customers that are with it means they become a major player. They are agressively trying to grow Commercial banking, something the new owners (if it happens) at the Bulls should note if the decide to rebank elsewhere.

In terms of jobs, the TUPE regulation means there cannot be any job cuts for the first 2 years. After that, who knows

Also, a tad out of context labelling them a spanish bank. Yes, the roots come from Spain , but in the same was as HSBC is Hong Kong. Santander are a global player with a lot of their income coming from South America. Santander UK is exactly that, it is ring fenced, by law as a UK entity and cannot be used to bail out any other country in monetary terms. Effectively it is very much a stand alone UK bank.

Adding to the above: TUPE does not prevent job cuts, sadly. It preserves the rights of employees when businesses are transferred.

Santander UK is, as TB says, essentially an UK entity owned by Santander of Spain. It is the sum of Abbey National, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley retail operations. If the parent fell over, though, the subsidiary would not be secure.

Not really comparable with HSBC, since the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation moved its domicile to the UK from HK when it took over Midland bank a couple of decades ago.

Santander UK was considering an IPO of part of its operations, but canned it because of the economic climate. At some stage, though, I would still expect them to look at having at least part of the equity in the hands of third-party shareholders. They certainly want to become a major fifth commercial force in the UK. Whether that means they will have any appetite for lending to "riskier" organisations is open to question, I suspect. My own view is that they would likely look to concentrate on quality lending - as would all the banks.

Yep, you put it much clearer than me Adey!!
And yes, quality lending has to be hoped for, along with common sense approaches to applications!!!!

In the end though lending carries a degree of risk and risk is an unknown, you can calculate it, hedge it, take insurance on it and try to account for it, but it's still a risk and so its something no one can control.

I just find it frustrating when people say x or y will not lend, or are reducing their lending, as though lending is right everyone is born with. I'm currently asking for a loan, but it does not mean I automatically expect to get it no matter how safe a bet I may seam. I also have an overdraft, again I'm aware that it's not actually my money and the bank can remove or reduce it at any point.

If a business is living off an overdraft, which many do even if that business is profitable and successful, it does not given them any additional right to expect such a facility to continue forever and a day. In the end it's someone else's money.