RBS chief executive Stephen Hester said this week that the bank will continue to be a very important player in real estate lending.
The former British Land chief executive, who spoke at the Investment Property Forum’s Alastair Ross Goobey Memorial Lecture on Tuesday, is working to reduce the bank’s £64.8bn of legacy real estate loans.
He said: “We were overexposed in real estate, but when we’ve corrected that we will still be very important,” adding that 20% of RBS’s UK commercial lending was earmarked for property.
Hester said that a key contradiction being wrestled with in relation to regulation is balancing property’s position as a key asset class to the economy with the part it plays at the heart of all economic downturns.
