I've long admired Fred Goodwin and a highly capable exec team at Royal Bank of Scotland. While their peers talk a good game they are busy making things happen. The company have a core strategy of growing through acquisition and today's news will take then immediately into a scale (top10) position in the US market..a market that is certainly competitive but that can also benefit from the insights to be gained from RBS's retail arm. The productivity plays will also undoubtedly come in (just as they did at NatWest) and you would have to bet that this is the team who can succeed in the US where others have erred notably Midland/HBSC. A key play has been to retain the Charter One US CEO, Bud Koch. True they now need to make things happen but it's a bold step and one that overtly heads into the reality that today there are no bargain basement prices on good quality US banks.

There are more acquisitions in the pipeline for RBS and the market jitters that have seen the share price drop 5% (at 1630) at time of writing represent a great defensive mid-term. The decsion to raise capital via a public placement may have taken some of the gloss of the deal today but I see this as an opportunity to accumulate at an undervalued level...take a longer term view and this one stands head and shoulders over the crowd. They have the do-ability factor. Any other views out there.

Not in these personally, But I have been in a meeting that included an RBS mortgage exec. and they stated that RBS have problems of the nicest kind at the moment.
Their Intermediary arm has seen mortgage applications rise from 150 per day to 500 per day since their re-organisation of the 4 key brands and re-aim of their products. it is causing delays in processing, but its a nice problem to have.
Good luck anyone still holding. What I heard sounds very good.
Alan

as a follow up, I have had a look at what has changed on their proposition to intermediaries and they have some very attractive, possibly market leading products.

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http://business.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=190862006

Gut feeling is that because RBS have a fairly high proportion of what they do abroad, that this bit of bad news won't be to much of a share price detractor.

May even be a combined entry point/recovery play.

See what they do to the price on Wednesday I think.