Letter: Banks doing well

Your article "Capital yet to feel full force of banks' collapse" (31 August) rightly paints a picture of an industry currently restructuring itself following the largest financial crisis in a generation.

But what it quite wrongly does is portray Edinburgh as a financial centre on the way out. While the cases of the traditional big banks are well documented, what is less well recognised is considerable growth in other less visible areas of banking such as international custody and asset servicing.

This is employing thousands of people in high quality, international and intellectually demanding jobs.

Edinburgh is second only to London in the UK as a financial centre and Scotland is the fourth largest centre for fund management in Europe, with some 650 billion of funds under management. Our fund managers make investment choices for their clients, day in day out, that influence economies and companies around the world.

RBS and Lloyds Banking Group have both set out very clear plans for recovery that command the confidence of their shareholders. Both are still huge employers in the city and on track to return to profitability, with consequential profit for the taxpayer in due course.

So while nobody would claim that Edinburgh has weathered the financial storm unscathed, we do need to maintain some balance and be realistic about how we fit into the wider international picture that is still emerging from the crisis.

Owen Kelly

Scottish Financial Enterprise

Melville Street

Edinburgh