The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc has made a payment of a Dividend Access Share (DAS) dividend of £1.193 billion to the Treasury.
The dividend represents the final amount payable to the Treasury and effects the immediate retirement of the DAS.
The DAS was issued in 2009 when the Treasury provided £25.5 billion of equity capital to RBS in exchange for B shares.
Under the DAS Retirement Agreement of 2014, RBS agreed to pay the Treasury an initial DAS dividend of £320 million which was paid in that year. A further £1.18 billion in DAS dividend to the Treasury (plus daily interest at a rate of 5% per annum from 1 January 2016) was required to retire the DAS.
On retirement, the DAS will be re-designated as a single B share which will be subsequently cancelled. Following the conversion in 2015 of the B shares held by HMT into Ordinary Shares, the retirement of the DAS will complete the normalisation of RBS’s capital structure.
Ross McEwan, RBS group chief executive, said: “On the back of progress we have made in strengthening the bank’s balance sheet in recent years, I am pleased that we are today able to repay the UK government £1.193 billion to finally retire the Dividend Access Share.
“This is another important milestone in our plan to resume capital distributions to our shareholders, and represents one less hurdle in our path to build the number one bank for customer service, trust and advocacy.”
