British MPs push Osborne for RBS break-up

British lawmakers on Tuesday urged Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne to speed up plans to spin off the state-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland into "good" and "bad" banks. In a letter to the Financial Times, the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards said it was "important for all the options for (RBS's) future structure to be examined as a matter of urgency". Osborne has ordered a report to weigh up splitting the bank into a "bad" part, housing written-off assets, as part of the government's plan to return RBS to the private sector. "We will establish a bad bank if it meets our three objectives: if it supports the British economy; if it's in the interests of taxpayers; and if it accelerates the return to private ownership," he said. The commission believes Osborne is against the complex split, but urged him not to let "formal accounting conventions" drive his decision. RBS, 81-percent owned by the government, was rescued with £45.5 billion ($71.3 billion, 53.5 billion euros) of taxpayer cash at the height of the 2008 global financial crisis under the then-Labour government, making it the world's biggest ever banking bailout.