RBS was forced to lower the price of the Citizens Financial IPO
RBS Gets £550m Banker Bonus Pool Green Light from Government Reuters

The Royal Bank of Scotland has allegedly received government approval over its proposed £550m banker bonus pot despite the embattled lender being fined for Libor fixing, undergoing a major change in management, a renewed crisis over its treatment of small to medium enterprises across Britain, and hefty IT problems.

According to media reports, the bonus pool for 2013 will be slightly above the amount IBTimes UK reported in December.

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RBS received a taxpayer funded £45bn (€54bn, $73bn) bailout in 2008, which eventually led it to be 81% owned by the government, and has to get permission from the UK Financial Investment group in order to pay bonuses.

RBS does not comment on speculation but it will unveil its results and 2013 bonus pool on 27 February.

Although basic salaries have dropped since 2008, the average annual pay per head at the markets business stands at £108,000, which is based upon pay in the first three quarters of 2013.

In 2009, RBS bankers were, on average, earning £174,000 a year.

RBS told IBTimes UK that "no decisions have been taken on 2013 pay and any speculation is premature."

"Variable pay has been reformed dramatically at RBS and is now a fraction of what it was before the crisis."

RBS Scandals

Following the credit crisis, RBS has been rocked by numerous scandals, from market manipulation, to mass mis-selling, to nationwide IT failures.

In February 2013, RBS agreed to pay £390m to settle US and UK charges related to the manipulation of the benchmark lending rate known as Libor, as well as pleading guilty to a criminal charge of wire fraud from a Japanese subsidiary.

At the end of November last year, the FCA has asked a number of banks to confirm that they have not engaged in similar practices to those allegedly followed by RBS in which businesses were engineered into default while the firm profited from them.

Lawrence Tomlinson, an adviser to Britain's business secretary Vince Cable, claimed that RBS pushed businesses into default after moving them into its Global Restructuring Group (GRG).

The FCA only just kicked off its own review last month.

At the same time, RBS put aside another £3.1bn to settle claims over the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI), mortgage products and interest rate swap agreements.

However, on top of all these problems, RBS is still having to tackle "decades of IT system investment failure," which left millions of customers unable to pay for goods and services or receive payments, after several service outages.

In tandem, the 12,000-strong RBOS Shareholder Action Group is taking the bank to court over allegations that the bank did not fully disclose its true financial condition prior to the government bailout.