Much has been made in recent days of Royal Bank of Scotland owner NatWest’s imminent return to full private ownership.

This will of course be an interesting enough landmark, even if it has been largely inevitable for a while now.

However, what comes to the front of the mind amid the low-key fanfare around this, particularly from a Scottish perspective, is just how different a bank it is from the institution that was riding high not so long before it became one of the big casualties of the global financial crisis.

Royal Bank of Scotland, which was at that stage known by that name with NatWest as a subsidiary, had to be bailed out in short order in autumn 2008 as the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers unleashed havoc in financial markets.

Trouble had, of course, been brewing in the global financial sector since the summer of 2007.

Royal Bank, with partners Santander and Fortis, completed a huge takeover of Dutch bank ABN Amro in October 2007. This deal appeared to leave the Scottish institution particularly exposed when the global financial crisis got under way in earnest less than a year later.

In the years before the ABN Amro deal, Royal Bank had enjoyed great success.

Notably, it acquired big-four UK bank NatWest in early 2000, after a captivating and protracted bid battle with Bank of Scotland.

Royal Bank then went on to implement the integration of NatWest impressively.

The Scottish bank expanded further internationally, with US-based Charter One among its acquisitions.

Royal Bank had been in the US market for years before this deal, having acquired Rhode Island-based Citizens in........

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