Sunday review

There weren't many large cap M&A scoops in the Sunday business sections this weekend but I guess that's to be expected in the run up to the Brexit referendum.

One tale, though, that did catch my eye was about Royal Bank of Scotland facing a £400 million claim in The Sunday Telegraph. Here is the link:

Shell / BG Group worries - part 3

There has been a lot of debate in the British financial press in recent weeks about whether Shell should press ahead with its multi-billion pound purchase of rival BG Group.

Ian McVeigh of Jupiter Fund Management has been particularly vocal in his opposition, likening the transaction to Royal Bank of Scotland's disastrous purchase of Dutch rival ABN Amro at the height of the credit boom. Read all about it here:

That email

Ping! An email arrives from a reader interested in the piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Deutsche Bank's $2.5 billion fine over interest rate manipulation. (Click on the link to remind yourself of the story - http://betaville123.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/that-meeting.html)

I suspect this reader has a vested interest in the situation. Still, his email posits some valid questions, so I have pasted the main body below:

RBS - it never rains but it pours...

It would appear things tend to all go wrong at once for taxpayer-backed Royal Bank of Scotland.

This morning James Hurley, an old Telegraph colleague, revealed on the front page of the business section in The Times that RBS was under pressure to strip companies of their assets to improve its balance sheet. Here is a link to James's piece: