Better engagement “could have prevented banking collapse”

Better employee engagement could have prevented last year’s near-collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), according to the author of a government-commissioned review.

Nita Clarke, joint author of the MacLeod review, told delegates at a fringe event that while two years ago RBS had “some good things to say about engaging employees”, some senior strategists were far from engaged. “It was a very small group of people at the very top who were not engaged who had hijacked the investment and capital decisions. Perhaps the world would have been a different place if they had [been engaged],” she said. RBS was bailed out by the government last autumn after posting a loss of £28 billion, the biggest in UK corporate history. The bank’s downfall was largely attributed to the decision by management to take over the ailing Dutch bank ABN Amro.