In an interview with the FT Weekend Magazine, Osborne said he would act quickly to ‘get rid of it’ if the Tories were re-elected.
Osborne said for several years he had gone along with the bank’s insistence that its investment arm was going to be viable and had done what he could since then to correct that decision.
Chief executive Stephen Hester resigned from the bank in June 2013 and while Osborne denied forcing Hester out he said his consent and approval had been sought given the large tax payer interest in the business.
The government bailed out RBS in 2008 during the financial crisis with a rescue package of £45bn.
The Chancellor said the size of the government’s stake in the bank was ‘massive’ and suggested that a sale of the shares could take years to complete.
To convey the enormity of the future sale of the bank, Osborne said ‘on some measures it’s bigger than all the privatisations of the 1980s put together’. He said he wanted to begin work on the sale in the summer after the election.
