I'm no expert but do have a very high level understanding, so I do apologise in advance if I have misunderstood anything below. I understand
@zhanginu has incredible expertise in banking & debt markets and may be able to provide some really solid analysis on this?
My High-level understanding: Royal Bank of Scotland were bailed out in 2009 by central bank & part of the package to "repay" includes a bunch of "alternative remedies". This announcement relates to a scheme where smaller UK banks were able to bid to receive a grant (basically "free money", I believe) to be used to invest in innovation in the SME space. Pool A had 3 spots: (
$= pound, too lazy to find symbol) $120m grant, $100m grant and $60m grant. CYB bid for a grant, but did not receive one from Pool A, per announcement (however at ~0.6x BV, receipt of grant was far from priced in by the market!).
There are, however 3 or 4 other pools ranging from $5m to $50m that CYB could still receive (pools B to D).
Another part of the "alternative remedy" is divestment of a pool of RBS customer base - my understanding is that CYB are very well placed to capture a large pool of this base & that this is more of a 'free-market' opportunity as apposed to the bureaucratic decision making process of the grants.
