The honours forefeiture committee met earlier today to decide on Goodwin’s fate after Prime Minister David Cameron referred the issue after to growing public and political pressure.
Goodwin presided over the massive expansion of RBS between 2001 and 2008, culminating in the bank heading a £49bn consortium deal to buy Dutch bank ABN Amro at the top of the market in 2007.
The banker was awarded the knighthood for services to banking in 2004 but became a focal point of public anger during the financial crisis after the government was forced to make a £45bn bailout of the bank.
Cameron had earlier said the committee would take into account the FSA’s recent report into the collapse of RBS, effectively nationalised in 2008 after making a £24.1bn loss with Goodwin at the helm.
A statement from the cabinet office said: “[Both the FSA and the Treasury Select Committee] are clear that the failure of RBS played an important role in the financial crisis of 2008-9 which, together with other macroeconomic factors, triggered the worst recession in the UK since the Second World War and imposed significant direct costs on British taxpayers and businesses.”
“Fred Goodwin was the dominant decision maker at RBS at the time.”
“In reaching this decision, it was recognised that widespread concern about Fred Goodwin’s decisions meant that the retention of a knighthood for “services to banking” could not be sustained.”
