RBS should start returning cash to treasury within a year

Taxpayer-backed Royal Bank of Scotland said the Government should be able to start selling off its stake within a year as the bank reported its best quarterly profit since 2011.

In the clearest signal yet of a timetable for the bank's return to the private sector, chairman Sir Philip Hampton said the recovery would be "substantially complete" by the middle of 2014 and that RBS would begin preparing a prospectus with the Treasury to sell to investors.

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