Taking something apart can be just as painful and complicated as putting it together. This is proving the case for Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which has seen the departure of the chair of its investment banking arm, Rory Cullinan.
Investors may recall that Mr Cullinan made headlines a month ago for sending social media messages to his daughter while at what he described as "boring" meetings at the failed lender. But the resignation has been interpreted as the result of a disagreement over the best strategy for shrinking its investment bank. RBS intends to reduce the headcount of its corporate and institutional banking unit from 18,000 to around 4,000, and to reduce the number of countries in which it operates.
Late last month RBS sold a quarter of US subsidiary Citizens Financial, which listed last year under Cullinan's supervision. There remains a European-set deadline to get rid of the remaining 40 per cent of Citizens' stock that RBS still owns by the end of next year. That is also its deadline to spin off UK branches under the brand Williams & Glyn. And there's further uncertainty surrounding how the UK government - of whichever colour, post-May - will sell its weighty 79 per cent stake in the troubled banking giant.
