Banksters at the Royal Bank of Scotland spent £300,000 on a secret champagne party for executives — less than a month after being given a £20 billion handout by British taxpayers.

The supposedly stricken bank laid on the celebration amid extraordinary secrecy to try to prevent details reaching the public, even cancelling the original venue, a top hotel in Hampshire, and transferring the party 350 miles north to Edinburgh, according to a News of the World report.
Despite holding the black tie ball in private, executives gave the game away as they danced in the street and continued the fun back at their five-star hotel.

In the public bar of the Caledonian Hilton other guests were singing and swigging double brandies into the small hours of yesterday.

Meanwhile, more than 300 HBOS bankers enjoyed a boozy £330,000 junket — complete with five-star hotel rooms and a four course meal.

The 302 Halifax/Bank of Scotland mortgage staff, along with 68 guests, guzzled down champagne while watching TV comedian Patrick Kielty — who charges £20,000 a show – tell jokes about the credit crunch. The mortgage staff and their guests whooped with delight as Kielty cracked jokes about homeowners having to ’scrimp and save’.



Joking about the bankers’ excesses while Britain suffers a credit crisis, Kielty told them: ‘Your secret is safe with me!’

Last month both HBOS and RBS, which owns NatWest, crawled cap-in-hand to the Government for help.

But this did not appear to weigh heavily on the minds of 40 executives from the Bancassurance department of RBS, which sells insurance and banking packages to businesses, and 30 of their partners.

Initially, the bank had booked Chewton Glen, a renowned Hampshire country house hotel which costs a minimum of £89,100 for a weekend. However, the booking was cancelled just days ago amid growing public anger at greedy banks.
Then a cloak-and-dagger operation was devised to shift the party to Edinburgh. A source claimed guests were instructed the celebration would be known only as the ‘Kudos event’, and those travelling to Edinburgh were told to book their own flights and claim the money back through expenses.

A spokesman for HBOS insisted: ‘It was a modest affair, an event we hold every year to reward our star performers. It was well deserved.’

Privatise the profits, socialise the losses — all that is wrong with the current financial order.

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