Royal Bank of Scotland chairman to step down

LONDON (AP) — Philip Hampton, the chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, has announced that he's leaving the company and joining the board of GlaxoSmithKline to become chairman in 2015.

Hampton has been chairman since February 2009, shortly after the onset of the financial crisis. Britain bailed out RBS, which remains 81 percent taxpayer-owned.

The group said Thursday that Hampton's departure was in line with his intention to serve between five and seven years.

Britain saved RBS with a 45 billion-pound ($71 billion) capital injection after CEO Fred Goodwin brought the bank to near-collapse with an aggressive global expansion strategy that included the ill-fated purchase of Dutch lender ABN Amro.

But the problems didn't end with the rescue and the RBS leadership has struggled to unravel years of excess.