Ex-RBS chief Fred Goodwin avoids court as shareholders accept £200m settlement

The last week has been filled with speculation about holdout investors’ attempts to raise enough money to fight on

Fred Goodwin faces a grilling from MPs in 2009, shortly after the bank he led nearly collapsed (PA)

Investors suing Royal Bank of Scotland over a 2008 rights offering accepted a £200m settlement offer, ending weeks of uncertainty over a London court case that threatened to dredge up the bank’s embarrassing bailout during the global financial crisis.

Shareholders who had held out for an improved offer finally accepted RBS’s 82p per share proposal during a Monday evening vote, a spokesman for the group said on Tuesday. The agreement is likely to be approved Wednesday by a judge.

The last week has been filled with speculation about holdout investors’ attempts to raise enough money to fight on while larger shareholders and funders were happy with the bank’s offer.

The confusion kept the possibility alive of seeing the company’s former chief executive Fred Goodwin give evidence about the difficult period for the bank.

The claimants argued that the bank deliberately concealed its financial weaknesses over its £12bn emergency rights offering.

The bank disputed that it had covered up any of its actions, saying the rights-issue prospectus included all the information investors needed, and the claimants were overlooking how volatile markets were in 2008.

A spokesman for RBS declined to comment. Sky News earlier reported the settlement.

The suit, filed in March 2013, swelled to more than 27,000 claimants seeking as much as £4bn, but the bank set aside £800m to settle with as many investors as possible in a bid to put some distance between current management and decisions that were made a decade ago. The majority of investors settled before the trial reached court.

Bloomberg