UK plans to inject £25.5 bn in RBS

LONDON: The UK revealed yesterday it was planning to inject up to £25.5bn ($36.5bn) in additional capital into Royal Bank of Scotland as part of a plan to stabilise the beleaguered lender and prevent it from being fully nationalised. The injection, under a government scheme to ringfence £325bn of RBS's assets against large future losses, is the first of what is expected to be a series of banking bail-outs designed to kick-start lending to the ailing British economy. Lloyds Banking Group, which includes HBOS, is today expected to reveal details of a similar scheme to ringfence up to £250bn of potentially bad assets. The long-awaited move came as RBS reported a £24.1bn loss for 2008, the largest in British corporate history, and revealed that businesses with assets of about £240bn - almost a quarter of the bank's balance sheet - would be sold or wound down over the next three to five years.