LONDON — The Royal Bank of Scotland said Thursday that its profit rose 27 percent in the second quarter, a positive sign as it accelerated efforts to shrink itself and refocus its business.
RBS, based in Edinburgh, announced plans in February to dismantle its global investment bank and to shrink the number of countries where it operates as it shifts to being a British-focused retail and corporate bank.
During the second quarter, the bank booked restructuring charges of 1.05 billion pounds, or about $1.64 billion. That included 734 million pounds related to the cutting of investment bank operations and 126 million pounds for the planned spinoff of Williams & Glyn, a branch network in Britain.
The bank, which is about 79 percent owned by the British government after its 2008 bailout, also recorded 459 million pounds in additional legal charges, the bulk of which are related to mortgage-backed securities litigation in the United States.
On a conference call with journalists Thursday, Ross McEwan, its chief executive, said that the bank had yet to begin settlement discussions with U.S. regulators regarding mortgage-backed securities, where various mortgages were bundled into larger instruments and sold.
He said the bank was “at the back of the queue” behind other lenders.
“This will continue to be a noisy year as we go further and faster on the restructuring and deal with the conduct and litigation that we’ve been quite clear about,” McEwan said. “These are tough issues coming down the track.”
In a news release, RBS said it was not likely to begin to return capital to investors through share buybacks and dividends before the first quarter of 2017.
For the three months ended June 30, RBS reported profit of 293 million pounds, from 230 million pounds in the same period a year earlier. That was ahead of analysts’ expectations.
Net interest income, the measure of what a bank earns on its lending after deducting what it pays out on deposits and other liabilities, declined less than 1 percent to 2.77 billion pounds in the second quarter, from 2.79 billion pounds in the same period a year earlier.
Operating expenses rose 14 percent to 4.21 billion pounds in the quarter, from 3.7 billion pounds in the second quarter of 2014.
RBS required government rescue loans of 45 billion pounds during the financial crisis in 2008.
In June, George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, announced plans for the government to begin to reduce its stake in RBS, even if it had to record a loss on some holdings. On Thursday, McEwan said the timing of those sales would be “up to the government.”
Since taking the helm as chief executive in 2013, McEwan has shrunk the bank’s global ambitions and concentrated on the British and Irish markets. It has sold or spun off several businesses in recent years, including Citizens Financial Group, an American retail bank.
Citizens Financial was spun off in an initial public offering in the United States last year. RBS said this week that it planned to fully exit its holdings in the bank by the end of the year after it sold $2.2 billion in shares this week.
As condition of its bailout, European regulators required RBS to dispose of Citizens Financial and Williams & Glyn. Williams & Glyn is expected to be spun off by the end of next year and become a challenger bank to the biggest lenders in Britain.