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RBS Staff Work From Home Following Edinburgh Protests (Update1)
2010-08-23 14:52:10.429 GMT
(Adds comment from police force, arrests in third
paragraph.)
By Sakshi Sharma and Peter Woodifield
Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc,
the U.K.'s biggest government-owned bank, said most of its head
office employees were working from home today after climate
change activists attacked the bank's Edinburgh headquarters.
Protesters from Camp for Climate Action attacked the
building at Gogarburn in Edinburgh with hammers and golf balls
yesterday. The group first encamped outside the bank's offices
in Edinburgh on Aug. 18. About 700 activists are protesting
RBS's funding of fossil fuel companies, saying it promotes
climate change.
The protestors disrupted Edinburgh traffic by pouring a
"substance similar" to diesel or vegetable oil onto the city
bypass and the road to the airport today, Lothian & Borders
Police said. The action was "extremely reckless and
dangerous," the police force said on its website today. While
eight people have been arrested today none of the activists has
gained access to any of the bank's premises, the police said.
"We are monitoring the situation very closely and we will
do whatever we can to ensure the safety of our employees and the
general public," Michael Strachan, Media Relations Officer at
RBS, said in a telephone interview from Edinburgh. He didn't
specify which employees or how many were working from home and
said operations weren't disrupted.
"We are protesting because RBS is the U.K. bank which is
most heavily involved in financing the fossil fuel industry
around the world," Peter McDonnell, a member of the group, said
in a telephone interview. "We're trying to develop a grass-root
movement of people who are willing and able to take more radical
action on climate change."
The protest will continue until tomorrow, following which
the group plans to leave the site, McDonnell said.
For Related News and Information:
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Top U.K. stories: TOP UK <GO>
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More Finance stories: NI FINTOP <GO>
--Editors: James Kraus, Tim Farrand
To contact the reporter on this story:
Sakshi Sharma in London at +44-207-037-7500 or
ssharma121@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Colin Keatinge at +44-20-7673-2494 or
ckeatinge@bloomberg.net.
