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In reply to the discussion: RBS will leave Scotland if voters back independence [View all]muriel_volestrangler
(101,320 posts)What the government did was put money into RBS (headquartered in Scotland, but had taken over Nat West, a bank in England and Wales, that had a larger turnover), in return for a majority shareholding. So there's an effective price the government paid for the shares, and if the share price ever gets back to that, it could sell them on the open market. But so far, it hasn't got near that price. Independence might affect that price, but the holding would still be an asset of the current UK government, and would have to be part of the dividing up of the government assets and liabilities that independence would force. If independence makes the bank riskier (eg uncertainty about a lender of last resort for it), the share price could go down more.
The other major bank involved, Lloyds, is also complicated; Lloyds was English/Welsh, and the government more or less forced it to merge with 'HBOS', which had been a (pre-crash) merger of Halifax, an English bank, and Bank of Scotland. Again, the government put in money for shares; this bank has faired a but better, and the government has sold back some of the holding without making a major loss on it.
Whose to blame is also, of course, complicated. The Scottish management at RBS did seem particularly ambitious and risk-taking, which meant that bank was particularly hard hit in the collapse. But little has been pointed to as actually illegal - it was more reckless capitalism, with a government (ironically Labour) that didn't bother regulating since it brought in taxable profits.