Royal Bank of Scotland’s disastrous takeover of ABN Amro in October 2007, widely blamed as the chief reason for the UK bank’s need to be bailed out the following year, has reared its head again, after RBS was today fined a record amount by the Financial Conduct Authority for trade reporting failures.

Financial firms are required under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, which came into force in November 2007, to report a standardised list of information about trades conducted in certain products, and the FCA uses that data in its efforts to detect and investigate suspected market abuse, insider trading and market manipulation.