英国两大零售银行将出售资产

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Two big British banks, both hit hard in the credit crunch, but each taking a different road to recovery. Lloyds Bank is going to the market in hopes of raising more than 30 billion dollars in new capital.
We look forward to the future with confidence. We've got a clear business plan. We know where we're going and we are delivering exactly in line with what we promised the city only a few months ago.
One shareholder that has already pledged to buy billions of dollars of new Lloyds shares, the UK government.
To protect the value of our shares, we've decided to take up our shares as new capital, investing 5.7 billion pounds net of an underwriting fee.
The more troubled of the two banks, the Royal Bank of Scotland is in no shape to sell new shares. Instead it will pay an annual fee to the UK government which will insure more than 300 billion dollars worth of RBS toxic assets. That's less than initially projected, meaning taxpayers are not exposed as much to risky assets. The government will also inject a further 40 billion dollars into RBS, meaning it'll now own more than 80 percent of the bank. The opposition party says RBS is the biggest bank bailout in the world.
It results in a bailout that is bigger than that to the Citigroup, bigger than that to the Bank of America, indeed all into a bank who we must remember the former chief executive of which was knighted for banking services by the prime minister of this government.
In return for this state aid, RBS and Lloyds have agreed to forgo any cash bonuses this year for top staff and delay bonuses for board members for three years. They've also agreed to be broken up. That demand coming from the European Commission Competition Authorities. Each will shed branches plus various mortgage arms and insurance companies bought up during the credit bubble.
It is entirely correct that the European Competition Commissioner has a decision about what a competitive market looks like when state aid has been used. Thus it has here, Germany, France, Netherlands, and we've seen decisions rolling out over a period of time.
The government says the sale of hundreds of branches will lead to new smaller banks being created, increasing competition. Critics want to make sure all of this leads to banks lending money to consumers and small businesses. After all, Britain is still in recession.
Jim Boulden, cnn, London.

Glossary

underwriting fee: Fees charged for evaluating your riskiness as a borrower. In the underwriting process, your lender decides whether or not they think you'll repay your loan as agreed. They look at your credit, debt to income ratios, and more.

underwriting: Underwriting refers to the process that a large financial service provider (bank, insurer, investment house) uses to assess the eligibility of a customer to receive their products (equity capital, insurance, mortgage or credit).

insure: 为…投保，在文中是指RBS要向英国政府缴纳年费，为3000亿美元的有毒资产投保

thus: in this manner or way