title: Mark Benton

text: Benton joined the cast of BBC drama "Waterloo Road" in its seventh series as Daniel 'Chalky' Chalk, a maths teacher, until 6 March 2013. He returned for an episode in series 9.


title: Mark Benton

text: On BBC Radio 4, Benton starred as the optimistic title character Harvey Easter in "Mr Blue Sky", written by Andrew Collins and broadcast in May and June 2011. A second series was due for May 2012. Benton has also played Fred the butcher in the televised series of episodes by Catherine Cookson.


title: Mark Benton

text: In 2012, Benton appeared in the one-off special "Panto!" as Francis, the Director of the play. In July 2012, it was announced that Benton would star as Edna Turnblad in the 2013 UK tour of "Hairspray the Musical", starting in February 2013 and finishing in September 2013.


title: Mark Benton

text: In 2015, Benton appeared as Police Constable Walt Everett in the BBC daytime series "Father Brown", episode 3.12 "The Standing Stones". He also appeared as Les in the "La Couchette", the first episode of the second series of anthology series "Inside No. 9". In 2015, Benton presented the BBC One daytime game show "The Edge" for its first series, being replaced by Gabby Logan.


title: Mark Benton

text: In 2016, UK progressive rock band Gandalf's Fist announced that Benton will voice several characters on their album "The Clockwork Fable"


title: Mark Benton

text: On the 21 August 2016, Benton played Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Mendelssohn) in the BBC prom 48. Benton appeared as a bartender in the December 2016 Christmas Special of British Sitcom "Outnumbered".


title: Mark Benton

text: As of February 2018, Benton is currently starring as Frank Hathaway, alongside actress Jo Joyner in the new BBC daytime comedy drama "Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators".


title: Mark Benton

text: Benton played the role of Eddie Rowbotham in episode 2 of the 20th season of "Midsomer Murders" ("Death of the Small Coppers").


title: Mark Benton

text: In September 2013, Benton became one of the contestants in the eleventh series of the BBC One show "Strictly Come Dancing", where he was partnered with world dancing champion Iveta Lukosiute. The couple left the show on week 10 after losing the public vote. Mark Benton has been in the most consecutive dance-offs in Strictly history with the number of 4 weeks in a row. He got eliminated on the 4th dance-off.


title: Mark Benton

text: Benton has been married to Sarah Gardner since 2002 and has three children. He is a supporter of Middlesbrough F.C. and has featured in the club's official website advertising campaign to encourage other fans to renew their season tickets.


title: 2002 NFL Draft

text: The 2002 NFL draft was the 67th annual meeting of National Football League (NFL) franchises to select newly eligible football players. The draft is known officially as the "NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting" and has been conducted annually since 1936. The draft took place April 20–21, 2002 at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York. The draft was broadcast on ESPN both days and eventually moved to ESPN2. The draft began with the Houston Texans selecting David Carr, and it ended with the Texans selecting Mr. Irrelevant, Ahmad Miller. There were thirty-two compensatory selections distributed among eighteen teams, with the Buffalo Bills receiving the most selections with four. The University of Miami was the college most represented in the draft, having five of its players selected in the first round. Although the Carolina Panthers finished with a 1–15 record which would normally have given them the first pick in each round, the Houston Texans were given the first pick because they were an expansion team. The league also held a supplemental draft after the regular draft and before the regular season.


title: 2002 NFL Draft

text: The last remaining active player from the 2002 draft was third-round quarterback Josh McCown, who threw his last pass in 2019 for the Philadelphia Eagles.


title: 2002 NFL Draft

text: In the explanations below, (D) denotes trades that took place during the draft, while (PD) indicates trades completed pre-draft.


title: 2002 NFL Draft

text: For each player selected in the Supplemental Draft, the team forfeits its pick in that round in the draft of the following season.


title: Laffer curve

text: In economics, the Laffer curve illustrates a theoretical relationship between rates of taxation and the resulting levels of the government's tax revenue. The Laffer curve assumes that no tax revenue is raised at the extreme tax rates of 0% and 100%, meaning that there is a tax rate between 0% and 100% that maximizes government tax revenue.


title: Laffer curve

text: The shape of the curve is a function of taxable income elasticity – i.e., taxable income changes in response to changes in the rate of taxation. As popularized by supply-side economist Arthur Laffer, the curve is typically represented as a graph that starts at 0% tax with zero revenue, rises to a maximum rate of revenue at an intermediate rate of taxation, and then falls again to zero revenue at a 100% tax rate. However, the shape of the curve is uncertain and disputed among economists.


title: Laffer curve

text: One implication of the Laffer curve is that increasing tax rates beyond a certain point is counter-productive for raising further tax revenue. In the United States, conservatives have used the Laffer curve to argue that lower taxes may increase tax revenue. However, the hypothetical maximum revenue point of the Laffer curve for any given market cannot be observed directly and can only be estimated – such estimates are often controversial. "The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics" reports that estimates of revenue-maximizing income tax rates have varied widely, with a mid-range of around 70%.


title: Laffer curve

text: The Laffer curve was popularized in the United States with policymakers following an afternoon meeting with Ford Administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in 1974, in which Arthur Laffer reportedly sketched the curve on a napkin to illustrate his argument. The term "Laffer curve" was coined by Jude Wanniski, who was also present at the meeting. The basic concept was not new; Laffer himself notes antecedents in the writings of the 14th-century social philosopher Ibn Khaldun and others.


title: Laffer curve

text: Laffer states that he did not invent the concept; citing numerous antecedents, including the "Muqaddimah" by 14th-century Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun, John Maynard Keynes and Adam Smith. Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 to 1932, articulated a similar policy idea in 1924.


title: Laffer curve

text: Laffer's name began to be associated with the idea after an article was published in "National Affairs" in 1978 that linked him to the idea. In the "National Affairs" article, Jude Wanniski recalled a 1974 dinner meeting at the Two Continents Restaurant in the Washington Hotel with Arthur Laffer, Wanniski, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy press secretary Grace-Marie Arnett. In this meeting, Laffer, arguing against President Gerald Ford's tax increase, reportedly sketched the curve on a napkin to illustrate the concept. Cheney did not accept the idea immediately, but it caught the imaginations of those present. Laffer professes no recollection of this napkin, but writes: "I used the so-called Laffer Curve all the time in my classes and with anyone else who would listen to me".


title: Laffer curve

text: Economist John Quiggin distinguishes between the Laffer curve and Laffer's analysis of tax rates. According to Quiggin, the Laffer curve was "correct but unoriginal", but Laffer's analysis that the United States was on the wrong side of the Laffer curve "was original but incorrect."


title: Laffer curve

text: There are historical precedents other than those cited by Laffer. Ferdinando Galiani wrote in "Della Moneta" (1751) that "It is an enormous error ... to believe that an impost always yields more revenue as it becomes heavier". He gave the example of a toll on late-night entry to a town which would be less remunerative if set unreasonably high. David Hume expressed similar arguments in his essay "Of Taxes" in 1756, as did fellow Scottish economist Adam Smith twenty years later.


title: Laffer curve

text: The Democratic party embraced this argument in the 1880s when high revenue from import tariffs raised during the Civil War (1861–1865) led to federal budget surpluses. The Republican party, which was then based in the protectionist industrial Northeast, argued that cutting rates would lower revenues. But the Democratic party, then rooted in the agricultural South, argued tariff reductions would increase revenues by increasing the number of taxable imports.


title: Laffer curve

text: In 1924, Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon wrote: "It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower rates". Exercising his understanding that "73% of nothing is nothing", he pushed for the reduction of the top income tax bracket from 73% to an eventual 24% (as well as tax breaks for lower brackets). Mellon was one of the wealthiest people in the United States, the third-highest income-tax payer in the mid-1920s, behind John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford. While he served as Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department his wealth peaked at around US$300–400 million. Personal income tax receipts rose from US$719 million in 1921 to over US$1 billion in 1929, an average increase of 4.2% per year over an 8-year period, which supporters attribute to the rate cut.


title: Laffer curve

text: In 2012, economists surveyed by the University of Chicago rejected the viewpoint that the Laffer Curve's postulation of increased tax revenue through a rate cut applies to federal US income taxes of the time in the medium term. When asked whether a "cut in federal income tax rates in the US right now would raise taxable income enough so that the annual total tax revenue would be higher within five years than without the tax cut", none of the economists surveyed agreed and 71% disagreed. According to Harvard University economist Jeffrey Frankel, a substantial majority of economists reject the proposition that income taxes are so high in the United States that tax cuts will pay for themselves.


title: Laffer curve

text: One of the conceptual uses of the Laffer curve is to determine the rate of taxation that will raise the maximum revenue (in other words, "optimizing" revenue collection). The revenue maximizing tax rate should not be confused with the optimal tax rate, which economists use to describe tax rates in a tax system that raises a given amount of revenue with the fewest distortions to the economy.


title: Laffer curve

text: In 2017, Jacob Lundberg of the Uppsala University estimated Laffer curves for 27 OECD countries, with top income-tax rates maximising tax revenue ranging from 60 to 61% (Austria, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden) to 74–76% (Germany, Switzerland, UK, US).


title: Laffer curve

text: Most countries appear to have set their highest tax rates below the peak rate, while five countries are exceeding it (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Sweden).


title: Laffer curve

text: Writing in 2010, John Quiggin said, "To the extent that there was an economic response to the Reagan tax cuts, and to those of George W. Bush twenty years later, it seems largely to have been a Keynesian demand-side response, to be expected when governments provide households with additional net income in the context of a depressed economy." A 1999 study by University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee, which examined major changes in high income tax rates in the United States from the 1920s onwards found no evidence that the United States was on the wrong side of the Laffer curve.


title: Laffer curve

text: In the early 1980s, Edgar L. Feige and Robert T. McGee developed a macroeconomic model from which they derived a Laffer curve. According to the model, the shape and position of the Laffer Curve depend upon the strength of supply side effects, the progressivity of the tax system and the size of the unobserved economy. Economist Paul Pecorino presented a model in 1995 that predicted the peak of the Laffer curve occurred at tax rates around 65%. A draft paper by Y. Hsing looking at the United States economy between 1959 and 1991 placed the revenue-maximizing average federal tax rate between 32.67% and 35.21%. A 1981 article published in the "Journal of Political Economy" presented a model integrating empirical data that indicated that the point of maximum tax revenue in Sweden in the 1970s would have been 70%. A 2011 study by Trabandt and Uhlig published in the "Journal of Monetary Economics" estimated a 70% revenue maximizing rate, and estimated that the US and most European economies were on the left of the Laffer curve (in other words, that raising taxes would raise further revenue). A 2005 study concluded that with the exception of Sweden, no major OECD country could increase revenue by reducing the marginal tax rate.


title: Laffer curve

text: "The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics" reports that a comparison of academic studies yields a range of revenue maximizing rates that centers around 70%.


title: Laffer curve

text: The Laffer curve has also been extended to taxation of goods and services. In their 2018 Econometrica paper, Miravete, Seim, and Thurk, show that in non-competitive markets, the strategic pricing response of firms is important to consider when estimating the Laffer curve. The authors show that firms increase their prices in response to a decrease in the ad valorem tax, leading to less of a quantity increase than would otherwise be expected. The net effect is to flatten the Laffer curve and move the revenue maximum point to the right.


title: Laffer curve

text: In 2005, the United States Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a paper called "Analyzing the Economic and Budgetary Effects of a 10 Percent Cut in Income Tax Rates." This paper considered the impact of a stylized reduction of 10% in the then existing marginal rate of federal income tax in the US (for example, if those facing a 25% marginal federal income tax rate had it lowered to 22.5%). Unlike earlier research, the CBO paper estimates the budgetary impact of possible macroeconomic effects of tax policies, that is, it attempts to account for how reductions in individual income tax rates might affect the overall future growth of the economy, and therefore influence future government tax revenues; and ultimately, impact deficits or surpluses. In the paper's most generous estimated growth scenario, only 28% of the projected lost revenue from the lower tax rate would be recouped over a 10-year period after a 10% across-the-board reduction in all individual income tax rates. In other words, deficits would increase by nearly the same amount as the tax cut in the first five years, with limited feedback revenue thereafter. Through increased budget deficits, the tax cuts primarily benefiting the wealthy will be paid for—plus interest—by taxes borne relatively evenly by all taxpayers. The paper points out that these projected shortfalls in revenue would have to be made up by federal borrowing: the paper estimates that the federal government would pay an extra US$200 billion in interest over the decade covered by the paper's analysis. In 2019, economists at the Joint Committee on Taxation revisited the macroeconomic and budgetary response to the stylized 10% reduction in statutory ordinary income tax rates, but from the levels set by P.L. 115-97. While incorporating additional tax detail within the modeling framework relative to previous analyses, the paper similarly estimates that this policy change would result in increased budget deficits - both in the short- and long-run - after accounting for revenue feedback from macroeconomic changes.


title: Laffer curve

text: Following the reduction of the top rate of income tax in the UK from 50% to 45% in 2013, HMRC estimated the cost of the tax reduction to be about £100 million (out of an income for this group of around £90 billion), but with large uncertainty on both sides. Robert Chote, the chairman of the UK Office for Budget Responsibility commented that Britain was "strolling across the summit of the Laffer curve", implying that UK tax rates had been close to the optimum rate.


title: Laffer curve

text: Laffer has presented the examples of Russia and the Baltic states, which instituted a flat tax with rates lower than 35% around the same time that their economies started growing. He has similarly referred to the economic outcome of the Kemp-Roth tax cuts, the Kennedy tax cuts, the 1920s tax cuts, and the changes in US capital gains tax structure in 1997. Some have also cited Hauser's Law, which postulates that US federal revenues, as a percentage of GDP, have remained stable at approximately 19.5% over the period 1950 to 2007 despite changes in marginal tax rates over the same period. Others however, have called Hauser's Law "misleading" and contend that tax changes have had large effects on tax revenues.


title: Laffer curve

text: More recently, based on Laffer curve arguments, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback greatly reduced state tax rates in 2012 in what has been called the Kansas experiment. Laffer was paid $75,000 to advise in the creation of Brownback's tax cut plan, and gave Brownback his full endorsement, stating that what Brownback was doing was "truly revolutionary." The state, which had previously had a budget surplus, experienced a budget deficit of about $200 million in 2012. Drastic cuts to state funding for education and infrastructure followed before the tax cut was repealed in 2017 by a bipartisan super majority in the Kansas legislature.


title: Laffer curve

text: Supply-side economics rose in popularity among Republican Party politicians from 1977 onwards. Prior to 1977, Republicans were more split on tax reduction, with some worrying that tax cuts would fuel inflation and exacerbate deficits.


title: Laffer curve

text: Supply-side economics is a school of macroeconomic thought that argues that overall economic well-being is maximized by lowering the barriers to producing goods and services (the "Supply Side" of the economy). By lowering such barriers, consumers are thought to benefit from a greater supply of goods and services at lower prices. Typical supply-side policy would advocate generally lower income tax and capital gains tax rates (to increase the supply of labor and capital), smaller government and a lower regulatory burden on enterprises (to lower costs). Although tax policy is often mentioned in relation to supply-side economics, supply-side economists are concerned with all impediments to the supply of goods and services and not just taxation.


title: Laffer curve

text: In their economics textbook "Principles of Economics" (7th edition), economists Karl E. Case of Wellesley College and Ray Fair of Yale University state "The Laffer curve shows the relationship between tax rates and tax revenues. Supply-side economists use it to argue that it is possible to generate higher revenues by cutting tax rates, but evidence does not appear to support this.


title: Laffer curve

text: The Laffer curve and supply-side economics inspired Reaganomics and the Kemp-Roth Tax Cut of 1981. Supply-side advocates of tax cuts claimed that lower tax rates would generate more tax revenue because the United States government's marginal income tax rates prior to the legislation were on the "right-hand" side of the curve. This assertion was derided by George H. W. Bush as "voodoo economics" while running against Reagan for the Presidential nomination in 1980. During the Reagan presidency, the top marginal rate of tax in the United States fell from 70% to 28%.


title: Laffer curve

text: David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director during his first administration and one of the early proponents of supply-side economics, was concerned that the administration did not pay enough attention to cutting government spending. He maintained that the Laffer curve was not to be taken literally—at least not in the economic environment of the 1980s United States. In "The Triumph of Politics", he writes: "[T]he whole California gang had taken [the Laffer curve] literally (and primitively). The way they talked, they seemed to expect that once the supply-side tax cut was in effect, additional revenue would start to fall, manna-like, from the heavens. Since January, I had been explaining that there is no literal Laffer curve." Stockman also said that "Laffer wasn't wrong, he just didn't go far enough" (in paying attention to government spending).


title: Laffer curve

text: Some have criticized elements of Reaganomics on the basis of equity. For example, economist John Kenneth Galbraith believed that the Reagan administration actively used the Laffer curve "to lower taxes on the affluent". Some critics point out that tax revenues almost always rise every year, and during Reagan's two terms increases in tax revenue were more shallow than increases during presidencies where top marginal tax rates were higher. Critics also point out that since the Reagan tax cuts, income has not significantly increased for the rest of the population. This assertion is supported by studies that show the income of the top 1% nearly doubling during the Reagan years, while income for other income levels increased only marginally; income actually decreased for the bottom quintile. However, a 2018 study by the Congressional Budget Office showed average household income rising 68.8% for the bottom quintile after government transfers (in the form of various income support and in-kind programmes, subsidies, and taxes) from 1979 to 2014. This same study showed the middle quintile's income rising 41.5% after government transfers and taxes.


title: Laffer curve

text: The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that extending the Bush tax cuts of 2001–2003 beyond their 2010 expiration would increase deficits by $1.8 trillion over the following decade. Economist Paul Krugman contended that supply-side adherents did not fully believe that the United States income tax rate was on the "backwards-sloping" side of the curve and yet they still advocated lowering taxes to encourage investment of personal savings.


title: Laffer curve

text: Supply-side economics indicates that the simple descriptions of the Laffer curve are usually intended for pedagogical purposes only and do not represent the complex economic responses to tax policy which may be observed from such viewpoints as provided by supply-side economics. Although the simplified Laffer curve is usually illustrated as a straightforward symmetrical and continuous bell-shaped curve, in reality the bell-shaped curve may be skewed or lop-sided to either side of the 'maximum'. Within the reality of complex and sudden changes to tax policy over time, the response of tax revenue to tax rates may vary dramatically and is not necessarily even continuous over time, when for example new legislation is enacted which abruptly changes tax revenue expectations.


title: Laffer curve

text: Laffer explains the model in terms of two interacting effects of taxation: an "arithmetic effect" and an "economic effect". The "arithmetic effect" assumes that tax revenue raised is the tax rate multiplied by the revenue available for taxation (or tax base). Thus revenue is equal to where is the tax rate and is the taxable base At a 0% tax rate, the model states that no tax revenue is raised. The "economic effect" assumes that the tax rate will affect the tax base itself. At the extreme of a 100% tax rate, the government collects zero revenue because taxpayers change their behavior in response to the tax rate: either they lose their incentive to work, or they find a way to avoid paying taxes. Thus, the "economic effect" of a 100% tax rate is to decrease the tax base to zero. If this is the case, then somewhere between 0% and 100% lies a tax rate that will maximize revenue.


title: Laffer curve

text: Graphical representations of the curve sometimes appear to put the rate at around 50%, if the tax base reacts to the tax rate linearly, but the revenue-maximizing rate could theoretically be "any" percentage greater than 0% and less than 100%. Similarly, the curve is often presented as a parabolic shape, but there is no reason that this is necessarily the case. The effect of changes in tax can be cased in terms of elasticities, where the revenue-maximizing elasticity of the tax base with respect to the tax is equal to 1. This is done by differentiating with respect to and grouping terms to reveal that the rate of change of with respect to is equal to the sum of elasticity of the tax base plus one all multiplied by the tax base. Thus as elasticity surpasses one absolute value, revenues begin to fall. The problem is similar to that of the monopolist who must never increase prices beyond the point at which the elasticity of demand exceeds one in absolute value.


title: Laffer curve

text: Wanniski noted that all economic activity would be unlikely to cease at 100% taxation, but it would switch from the exchange of money to barter. He also noted that there can be special circumstances in which economic activity can continue for a period at a near 100% taxation rate (for example, in war economy).


title: Laffer curve

text: Various efforts have been made to quantify the relationship between tax revenue and tax rates (for example, in the United States by the Congressional Budget Office). While the interaction between tax rates and tax revenue is generally accepted, the precise nature of this interaction is debated. In practice, the shape of a hypothetical Laffer curve for a given economy can only be estimated. The relationship between tax rate and tax revenue is likely to vary from one economy to another and depends on the elasticity of supply for labor, as well as various other factors. Even in the same economy, the characteristics of the curve could vary over time. Complexities such as progressive taxes and possible differences in the incentive to work for different income groups complicate the task of estimation. The structure of the curve may also be changed by policy decisions. For example, if tax loopholes and tax shelters are made more readily available by legislation, the point at which revenue begins to decrease with increased taxation is likely to become lower.


title: Laffer curve

text: Laffer presented the curve as a pedagogical device to show that in some circumstances, a reduction in tax rates will actually increase government revenue and not need to be offset by decreased government spending or increased borrowing. For a reduction in tax rates to increase revenue, the current tax rate would need to be higher than the revenue maximizing rate. In 2007, Laffer said that the curve should not be the sole basis for raising or lowering taxes.


title: Laffer curve

text: Supply-siders argue that in a high tax rate environment, lowering tax rates would result in either increased revenues or smaller revenue losses than one would expect relying on only static estimates of the previous tax base.


title: Laffer curve

text: This led supply-siders to advocate large reductions in marginal income and capital gains tax rates to encourage greater investment, which would produce more supply. Jude Wanniski and many others advocate a zero capital gains rate. The increased aggregate supply would result in increased aggregate demand, hence the term "supply-side economics".


title: Laffer curve

text: Laffer assumes that the government's revenue is a continuous function of the tax rate. However, in some theoretical models, the Laffer curve can be discontinuous, leading to an inability to devise a revenue-maximizing tax rate solution. Additionally, the Laffer curve depends on the assumption that tax revenue is used to provide a public good that is separable in utility and separate from labor supply, which may not be true in practice.


title: Laffer curve

text: The Laffer curve as presented is simplistic in that it assumes a single tax rate and a single labor supply. Actual systems of public finance are more complex, and there is serious doubt about the relevance of considering a single marginal tax rate. In addition, revenue may well be a multivalued function of tax rate; for instance, an increase in tax rate to a certain percentage may not result in the same revenue as a decrease in tax rate to the same percentage (a kind of hysteresis). Furthermore, the Laffer curve does not take explicitly into account the nature of the tax avoidance taking place. It is possible that if all producers are endowed with two survival factors in the market (ability to produce efficiently and ability to avoid tax), then the revenues raised under tax avoidance can be greater than without avoidance, and thus the Laffer curve maximum is found to be farther right than thought. The reason for this result is that if producers with low productive abilities (high production costs) tend to have strong avoidance abilities as well, a uniform tax on producers actually becomes a tax that discriminates on the ability to pay. However, if avoidance abilities and productive abilities are unrelated, then this result disappears.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: A hedge is an investment position intended to offset potential losses or gains that may be incurred by a companion investment. A hedge can be constructed from many types of financial instruments, including stocks, exchange-traded funds, insurance, forward contracts, swaps, options, gambles, many types of over-the-counter and derivative products, and futures contracts.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Public futures markets were established in the 19th century to allow transparent, standardized, and efficient hedging of agricultural commodity prices; they have since expanded to include futures contracts for hedging the values of energy, precious metals, foreign currency, and interest rate fluctuations.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Hedging is the practice of taking a position in one market to offset and balance against the risk adopted by assuming a position in a contrary or opposing market or investment. The word hedge is from Old English "hecg", originally any fence, living or artificial. The first known use of the word as a verb meaning 'dodge, evade' dates from the 1590s; that of 'insure oneself against loss,' as in a bet, is from the 1670s.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: A typical hedger might be a commercial farmer. The market values of wheat and other crops fluctuate constantly as supply and demand for them vary, with occasional large moves in either direction. Based on current prices and forecast levels at harvest time, the farmer might decide that planting wheat is a good idea one season, but the price of wheat might change over time. Once the farmer plants wheat, he is committed to it for an entire growing season. If the actual price of wheat rises greatly between planting and harvest, the farmer stands to make a lot of unexpected money, but if the actual price drops by harvest time, he is going to lose the invested money.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Due to the uncertainty of future supply and demand fluctuations, and the price risk imposed on the farmer, the farmer in this example may use different financial transactions to reduce, or hedge, their risk. One such transaction is the use of forward contracts. Forward contracts are mutual agreements to deliver a certain amount of a commodity at a certain date for a specified price and each contract is unique to the buyer and seller. For this example, the farmer can sell a number of forward contracts equivalent to the amount of wheat he expects to harvest and essentially lock in the current price of wheat. Once the forward contracts expire, the farmer will harvest the wheat and deliver it to the buyer at the price agreed to in the forward contract. Therefore, the farmer has reduced his risks to fluctuations in the market of wheat because he has already guaranteed a certain number of bushels for a certain price. However, there are still many risks associated with this type of hedge. For example, if the farmer has a low yield year and he harvests less than the amount specified in the forward contracts, he must purchase the bushels elsewhere in order to fill the contract. This becomes even more of a problem when the lower yields affect the entire wheat industry and the price of wheat increases due to supply and demand pressures. Also, while the farmer hedged all of the risks of a price decrease away by locking in the price with a forward contract, he also gives up the right to the benefits of a price increase. Another risk associated with the forward contract is the risk of default or renegotiation. The forward contract locks in a certain amount and price at a certain future date. Because of that, there is always the possibility that the buyer will not pay the amount required at the end of the contract or that the buyer will try to renegotiate the contract before it expires.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Future contracts are another way our farmer can hedge his risk without a few of the risks that forward contracts have. Future contracts are similar to forward contracts except they are more standardized (i.e. each contract is the same quantity and date for everyone). These contracts trade on exchanges and are guaranteed through clearinghouses. Clearinghouses ensure that every contract is honored and they take the opposite side of every contract. Future contracts typically are more liquid than forward contracts and move with the market. Because of this, the farmer can minimize the risk he faces in the future through the selling of future contracts. Future contracts also differ from forward contracts in that delivery never happens. The exchanges and clearinghouses allow the buyer or seller to leave the contract early and cash out. So tying back into the farmer selling his wheat at a future date, he will sell short futures contracts for the amount that he predicts to harvest to protect against a price decrease. The current (spot) price of wheat and the price of the futures contracts for wheat converge as time gets closer to the delivery date, so in order to make money on the hedge, the farmer must close out his position earlier than then. On the chance that prices decrease in the future, the farmer will make a profit on his short position in the futures market which offsets any decrease in revenues from the spot market for wheat. On the other hand, if prices increase, the farmer will generate a loss on the futures market which is offset by an increase in revenues on the spot market for wheat. Instead of agreeing to sell his wheat to one person on a set date, the farmer will just buy and sell futures on an exchange and then sell his wheat wherever he wants once he harvests it.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: A stock trader believes that the stock price of Company A will rise over the next month, due to the company's new and efficient method of producing widgets. They want to buy Company A shares to profit from their expected price increase, as they believe that shares are currently underpriced. But Company A is part of a highly volatile widget industry. So there is a risk of a future event that affects stock prices across the whole industry, including the stock of Company A along with all other companies.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Since the trader is interested in the specific company, rather than the entire industry, they want to "hedge out" the industry-related risk by short selling an equal value of shares from Company A's direct, yet weaker competitor, Company B.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: The trader has sold short the same value of shares (the value, number of shares × price, is $1000 in both cases).


title: Hedge (finance)

text: If the trader was able to short sell an asset whose price had a mathematically defined relation with Company A's stock price (for example a put option on Company A shares), the trade might be essentially riskless. In this case, the risk would be limited to the put option's premium.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: On the second day, a favorable news story about the widgets industry is published and the value of all widgets stock goes up. Company A, however, because it is a stronger company, increases by 10%, while Company B increases by just 5%:


title: Hedge (finance)

text: The trader might regret the hedge on day two, since it reduced the profits on the Company A position. But on the third day, an unfavorable news story is published about the health effects of widgets, and all widgets stocks crash: 50% is wiped off the value of the widgets industry in the course of a few hours. Nevertheless, since Company A is the better company, it suffers less than Company B:


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Without the hedge, the trader would have lost $450. But the hedge – the short sale of Company B – nets a profit of $25 during a dramatic market collapse.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: The introduction of stock market index futures has provided a second means of hedging risk on a single stock by selling short the market, as opposed to another single or selection of stocks. Futures are generally highly fungible and cover a wide variety of potential investments, which makes them easier to use than trying to find another stock which somehow represents the opposite of a selected investment. Futures hedging is widely used as part of the traditional long/short play.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Employee stock options (ESOs) are securities issued by the company mainly to its own executives and employees. These securities are more volatile than stocks. An efficient way to lower the ESO risk is to sell exchange traded calls and, to a lesser degree, to buy puts. Companies discourage hedging the ESOs but there is no prohibition against it.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Airlines use futures contracts and derivatives to hedge their exposure to the price of jet fuel. They know that they must purchase jet fuel for as long as they want to stay in business, and fuel prices are notoriously volatile. By using crude oil futures contracts to hedge their fuel requirements (and engaging in similar but more complex derivatives transactions), Southwest Airlines was able to save a large amount of money when buying fuel as compared to rival airlines when fuel prices in the U.S. rose dramatically after the 2003 Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: As an emotion regulation strategy, people can bet against a desired outcome. A New England Patriots fan, for example, could bet their opponents to win to reduce the negative emotions felt if the team loses a game. Some scientific wagers, such as Hawking's 1974 "insurance policy" bet, fall into this category.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: People typically do not bet against desired outcomes that are important to their identity, due to negative signal about their identity that making such a gamble entails. Betting against your team or political candidate, for example, may signal to you that you are not as committed to them as you thought you were.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Hedging can be used in many different ways including foreign exchange trading. The stock example above is a "classic" sort of hedge, known in the industry as a pairs trade due to the trading on a pair of related securities. As investors became more sophisticated, along with the mathematical tools used to calculate values (known as models), the types of hedges have increased greatly.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: A hedging strategy usually refers to the general risk management policy of a financially and physically trading firm how to minimize their risks. As the term hedging indicates, this risk mitigation is usually done by using financial instruments, but a hedging strategy as used by commodity traders like large energy companies, is usually referring to a business model (including both financial "and" physical deals).


title: Hedge (finance)

text: In order to show the difference between these strategies, consider the fictional company "BlackIsGreen Ltd" trading coal by buying this commodity at the wholesale market and selling it to households mostly in winter.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Back-to-back (B2B) is a strategy where any open position is immediately closed, e.g. by buying the respective commodity on the spot market.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: This technique is often applied in the commodity market when the customers’ price is directly calculable from visible forward energy prices at the point of customer sign-up.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: If "BlackIsGreen" decides to have a B2B-strategy, they would buy the exact amount of coal at the very moment when the household customer comes into their shop and signs the contract. This strategy minimizes many commodity risks, but has the drawback that it has a large volume and liquidity risk, as "BlackIsGreen" does not know whether it can find enough coal on the wholesale market to fulfill the need of the households.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Tracker hedging is a pre-purchase approach, where the open position is decreased the closer the maturity date comes.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: If "BlackIsGreen" knows that most of the consumers demand coal in winter to heat their house, a strategy driven by a tracker would now mean that "BlackIsGreen" buys e.g. half of the expected coal volume in summer, another quarter in autumn and the remaining volume in winter. The closer the winter comes, the better are the weather forecasts and therefore the estimate, how much coal will be demanded by the households in the coming winter.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Retail customers’ price will be influenced by long-term wholesale price trends. A certain "hedging corridor" around the pre-defined tracker-curve is allowed and fraction of the open positions decreases as the maturity date comes closer.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Delta-hedging mitigates the financial risk of an option by hedging against price changes in its underlying. It is so called as Delta is the first derivative of the option's value with respect to the underlying instrument's price. This is performed in practice by buying a derivative with an inverse price movement. It is also a type of market neutral strategy.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Only if "BlackIsGreen" chooses to perform "delta-hedging" as strategy, actual financial instruments come into play for hedging (in the usual, stricter meaning).


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Risk reversal means simultaneously buying a call option and selling a put option. This has the effect of simulating being long on a stock or commodity position.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Many hedges do not involve exotic financial instruments or derivatives such as the married put. A natural hedge is an investment that reduces the undesired risk by matching cash flows (i.e. revenues and expenses). For example, an exporter to the United States faces a risk of changes in the value of the U.S. dollar and chooses to open a production facility in that market to match its expected sales revenue to its cost structure.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Another example is a company that opens a subsidiary in another country and borrows in the foreign currency to finance its operations, even though the foreign interest rate may be more expensive than in its home country: by matching the debt payments to expected revenues in the foreign currency, the parent company has reduced its foreign currency exposure. Similarly, an oil producer may expect to receive its revenues in U.S. dollars, but faces costs in a different currency; it would be applying a natural hedge if it agreed to, for example, pay bonuses to employees in U.S. dollars.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: One common means of hedging against risk is the purchase of insurance to protect against financial loss due to accidental property damage or loss, personal injury, or loss of life.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: There are varying types of financial risk that can be protected against with a hedge. Those types of risks include:


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Equity in a portfolio can be hedged by taking an opposite position in futures. To protect your stock picking against systematic market risk, futures are shorted when equity is purchased, or long futures when stock is shorted.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: One way to hedge is the market neutral approach. In this approach, an equivalent dollar amount in the stock trade is taken in futures – for example, by buying 10,000 GBP worth of Vodafone and shorting 10,000 worth of FTSE futures (the index in which Vodafone trades).


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Another way to hedge is the beta neutral. Beta is the historical correlation between a stock and an index. If the beta of a Vodafone stock is 2, then for a 10,000 GBP long position in Vodafone an investor would hedge with a 20,000 GBP equivalent short position in the FTSE futures.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Futures contracts and forward contracts are means of hedging against the risk of adverse market movements. These originally developed out of commodity markets in the 19th century, but over the last fifty years a large global market developed in products to hedge financial market risk.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Investors who primarily trade in futures may hedge their futures against synthetic futures. A synthetic in this case is a synthetic future comprising a call and a put position. Long synthetic futures means long call and short put at the same expiry price. To hedge against a long futures trade a short position in synthetics can be established, and vice versa.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: "Stack hedging" is a strategy which involves buying various futures contracts that are concentrated in nearby delivery months to increase the liquidity position. It is generally used by investors to ensure the surety of their earnings for a longer period of time.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: A contract for difference (CFD) is a two-way hedge or swap contract that allows the seller and purchaser to fix the price of a volatile commodity. Consider a deal between an electricity producer and an electricity retailer, both of whom trade through an electricity market pool. If the producer and the retailer agree to a strike price of $50 per MWh, for 1 MWh in a trading period, and if the actual pool price is $70, then the producer gets $70 from the pool but has to rebate $20 (the "difference" between the strike price and the pool price) to the retailer.


title: Hedge (finance)

text: Conversely, the retailer pays the difference to the producer if the pool price is lower than the agreed upon contractual strike price. In effect, the pool volatility is nullified and the parties pay and receive $50 per MWh. However, the party who pays the difference is "out of the money" because without the hedge they would have received the benefit of the pool price.


title: Carol of the Bells

text: "Carol of the Bells" is a popular Christmas carol, with music by Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych in 1914 and lyrics by Peter J. Wilhousky. The song is based on the Ukrainian folk chant "Shchedryk". The music is in the public domain; Wilhousky's lyrics, however, are under copyright owned by Carl Fischer Music.


title: Carol of the Bells

text: The music is based on a four-note ostinato and is in time signature, with the B-flat bell pealing in time. The carol is metrically bistable, and a listener can focus on either measure or switch between them. It has been adapted for many genres, including: classical, metal, jazz, country music, rock, trap, and pop. The piece also features in films, television shows, and parodies.


title: Carol of the Bells

text: The conductor of the Ukrainian Republic Capella, Oleksander Koshyts (also spelled Alexander Koshetz) commissioned Leontovych to create the song based on traditional Ukrainian folk chants, and the resulting new work for choir, "Shchedryk", was based on four notes Leontovych found in an anthology.


title: Carol of the Bells

text: The original folk story related in the song was associated with the coming New Year, which, in pre-Christian Ukraine, was celebrated with the coming of spring in April. The original Ukrainian title translates to "the generous one" or is perhaps derived from the Ukrainian word for bountiful (), and tells a tale of a swallow flying into a household to proclaim the bountiful year that the family will have.


title: Carol of the Bells

text: With the introduction of Christianity to Ukraine and the adoption of the Julian calendar, the celebration of the New Year was moved from April to January, and the holiday with which the chant was originally associated became Malanka (, ), the eve of the Julian New Year (the night of January 13–14 in the Gregorian calendar). The songs sung for this celebration are known as .


title: Carol of the Bells

text: The song was first performed by students at Kyiv University in December 1916, but the song lost popularity in Ukraine shortly after the Soviet Union took hold. It was introduced to Western audiences by the Ukrainian National Chorus during its 1919 concert tour of Europe and America, where it premiered in the United States on October 5, 1922, to a sold-out audience at Carnegie Hall. The original work was intended to be sung a cappella by mixed four-voice choir.


title: Carol of the Bells

text: Two other settings of the composition were also created by Leontovych: One for women's choir (unaccompanied) and another for children's choir with piano accompaniment. These are rarely performed or recorded.


title: Carol of the Bells

text: Wilhousky rearranged the melody for orchestra with new lyrics for NBC radio network's symphony orchestra, centered around the theme of bells because the melody reminded him of hand bells, which begins "Hark! How the bells". It was first aired during the Great Depression, and Wilhousky copyrighted the new lyrics in 1936 and also published the song, despite the song having been published almost two decades earlier in the Ukrainian National Republic. Its initial popularity stemmed largely from Wilhousky's ability to reach a wide audience as his role as arranger for the NBC Symphony Orchestra. It is now strongly associated with Christmas because of its new lyrics, which reference bells, caroling, and the line "merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas".


title: Carol of the Bells

text: "Ring, Christmas Bells", an English-language variant featuring nativity-based lyrics, was written by Minna Louise Hohman in 1947. Two other versions exist by anonymous writers: one from 1957 titled "Come Dance and Sing" and one from 1972 that begins "Hark to the bells".


title: Carol of the Bells

text: American recordings by various artists began to surface on the radio in the 1940s. The song gained further popularity when it was featured in television advertisements for champagne in the 1970s by French a cappella group the Swingle Singers. "Carol of the Bells" has been recorded into over 150 versions and re-arrangements for varying vocal and instrumental compositions.


title: Jennifer Rush

text: Jennifer Rush (born Heidi Stern; September 28, 1960) is an American pop and rock singer. She achieved success during the mid-1980s around the world, with the release of a number of singles and studio albums including the million-selling single "The Power of Love", which she co-wrote and released in 1984. She saw her greatest success in Europe, particularly Germany.


title: Jennifer Rush

text: Rush was born Heidi Stern in Astoria in Queens, New York, and has two older brothers. Her father, Maurice Stern, is an operatic tenor, voice teacher and sculptor. Her parents divorced, and she and her brothers lived with their mother until Rush was a toddler, and then with her father and his second wife in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Rush studied violin at the Juilliard School and also learned to play the piano, although she did not enjoy these instruments and instead took to playing the guitar in private. When Rush was nine, the Stern family moved to Germany. They returned to the US when she was a teenager. She also lived for a time in Seattle, when her father was a professor of voice at the University of Washington.


title: Jennifer Rush

text: Rush's debut studio album, titled with her original name of Heidi Stern, was released locally in Seattle, Washington, in 1979. After meeting singer, songwriter and producer Gene McDaniels in Seattle, Rush flew to LA to record demo songs with him. Rush credits McDaniels as being her first and most influential mentor as a songwriter and singer. In 1982, following McDaniels's persistence, Rush moved to Wiesbaden, Germany, where her father was engaged as an opera singer.


title: Jennifer Rush

text: It was the co-written single "The Power of Love", the fifth and last single release from her debut studio album, that became the biggest selling single of 1985 in the United Kingdom, as well as becoming a significant hit in Australia, Ireland, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Portugal, South Africa and Sweden, and was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as "the best-selling single by a female solo artist in the history of the British music industry". "The Power of Love" held that status until 1992, when it was outsold by Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You".


title: Jennifer Rush

text: "The Power of Love" topped the charts for more than eight weeks in Australia, South Africa and numerous European countries. But though it reached number one in several other countries, Rush's version reached only No. 57 in the United States "Billboard" Hot 100 chart. After several cover versions by other artists, the Celine Dion version made a U.S. chart impact in 1994.


title: Jennifer Rush

text: Rush remained successful singing in both English and Spanish, where her next two albums reached number 1 for 14 weeks and 9 weeks respectively. In the UK, three of her albums reached the top 50 in the albums chart. Her third studio album "Heart over Mind" (1987), featuring compositions by Desmond Child, Michael Bolton, and Diane Warren, and guitar work from Richie Sambora of Bon Jovi, brought her Top 40 success in her home country, with "Flames of Paradise", a duet with Elton John. She also recorded duets with Michael Bolton, Plácido Domingo and Brian May.


title: Jennifer Rush

text: Rush continued to be a prolific songwriter and co-wrote many of the songs on her albums with her record producers including Desmond Child, Phil Ramone, Michael J. Powell, Christopher Neil and Diane Warren.


title: Jennifer Rush

text: Rush built her success through the 1990s, releasing four albums, the last being 1998's "Classics," along with new songs, and also re-recording her biggest hits with the Hungarian Philharmonic Orchestra. After that she took some time off in New York, dedicating time to her daughter, who was born in 1993. She has recently publicly acknowledged being known as a songwriter and not a singer in New York City allowed her to raise her daughter in what she considered a more stable environment than she was raised. She could still travel and perform, but also enjoyed the admitted luxury of songwriting with colleagues based on the East Coast and being available to her daughter as a single mother. A series of greatest-hits compilation albums followed in the new millennium.


title: Jennifer Rush

text: She released a box set "Stronghold – The Collector's Hit Box" in August 2007. This compilation included all Rush singles from 1982 to 1991 (with her first record company), and in their "extended versions", as available. It also included all the B-sides and other rare or unreleased tracks (among them four James Bond theme songs, recorded live in 1984 and only released in a very limited edition by the Berlin Philharmonic).


title: Jennifer Rush

text: In March 2009, she announced on her official website that she had signed a worldwide recording contract with Sony Music/Ariola for only one album, "Now Is the Hour", which was released in 2010. This marked a return to the recording label where she had made her international breakthrough in the 1980s and on which she had released the first five studio albums of her career. "Now Is the Hour" was released on March 5, 2010, in most of Europe, and on March 8, 2010, in the UK.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The Royal Bank of Scotland plc (RBS; ) is a major retail and commercial bank in Scotland. It is one of the retail banking subsidiaries of NatWest Group, together with NatWest (in England and Wales) and Ulster Bank. The Royal Bank of Scotland has around 700 branches, mainly in Scotland, though there are branches in many larger towns and cities throughout England and Wales. The bank is completely separate from the fellow Edinburgh-based bank, the Bank of Scotland, which pre-dates the Royal Bank by 32 years. The Royal Bank of Scotland was established in 1724 to provide a bank with strong Hanoverian and Whig ties.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Following ring-fencing of the Group's core domestic business, the bank became a direct subsidiary of NatWest Holdings in 2019. NatWest Markets comprises the Group's investment banking arm. To give it legal form, the former RBS entity was renamed NatWest Markets in 2018; at the same time Adam and Company (which held a separate PRA banking licence) was renamed The Royal Bank of Scotland, with Adam and Company continuing as an RBS private banking brand in Scotland, along the same lines as the Messrs. Drummond and Child & Co. businesses in England.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The bank traces its origin to the Society of the Subscribed Equivalent Debt, which was set up by investors in the failed Company of Scotland to protect the compensation they received as part of the arrangements of the 1707 Acts of Union. The "Equivalent Society" became the "Equivalent Company" on 21 November 1724, and the new company wished to move into banking. The British government received the request favourably as the "Old Bank", the Bank of Scotland, was suspected of having Jacobite sympathies. Accordingly, the "New Bank" was chartered on 31 May 1727 as the Royal Bank of Scotland, with Archibald Campbell, Lord Ilay, appointed its first governor.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: On 31 May 1728, the Royal Bank of Scotland invented the overdraft, which was later considered an innovation in modern banking. It allowed William Hogg, a merchant in the High Street of Edinburgh, access to £1,000 (£ in today's value) credit.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Competition between the Old and New Banks was fierce and centred on the issue of banknotes. The policy of the Royal Bank was to either drive the Bank of Scotland out of business or take it over on favourable terms.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The Royal Bank built up large holdings of the Bank of Scotland's notes, which it acquired in exchange for its own notes, then suddenly presented to the Bank of Scotland for payment. To pay these notes, the Bank of Scotland was forced to call in its loans and, in March 1728, to suspend payments. The suspension relieved the immediate pressure on the Bank of Scotland at the cost of substantial damage to its reputation and gave the Royal Bank a clear space to expand its own business - although the Royal Bank's increased note issue also made it more vulnerable to the same tactics.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Despite talk of a merger with the Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank did not possess the wherewithal to complete the deal. By September 1728, the Bank of Scotland was able to start redeeming its notes again, with interest, and in March 1729, it resumed lending. To prevent similar attacks in the future, the Bank of Scotland put an "option clause" on its notes, giving it the right to make the notes interest-bearing while delaying payment for six months; the Royal Bank followed suit. Both banks eventually decided that the policy they had followed was mutually self-destructive and a truce was arranged, but it still took until 1751 before the two banks agreed to accept each other's notes.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The bank opened its first branch office outside Edinburgh in 1783 when it opened one in Glasgow, in part of a draper's shop in the High Street. Further branches were opened in Dundee, Rothesay, Dalkeith, Greenock, Port Glasgow, and Leith in the first part of the nineteenth century.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: In 1821, the bank moved from its original head office in Edinburgh's Old Town to Dundas House, on St. Andrew Square in the New Town. The building as seen along George Street forms the eastern end of the central vista in New Town. It was designed for Sir Lawrence Dundas by Sir William Chambers as a Palladian mansion, completed in 1774. An axial banking hall (Telling Room) behind the building, designed by John Dick Peddie, was added in 1857; it features a domed roof, painted blue internally, with gold star-shaped coffers. The banking hall continues in use as a branch of the bank, and Dundas House remains the registered head office of the bank to this day.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The rest of the nineteenth century saw the bank pursue mergers with other Scottish banks, chiefly as a response to failing institutions. The assets and liabilities of the Western Bank were acquired following its collapse in 1857; the Dundee Banking Company was acquired in 1864. By 1910, the Royal Bank of Scotland had 158 branches and around 900 staff.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: By 1969, economic conditions were becoming more difficult for the banking sector. In response, the Royal Bank of Scotland merged with National Commercial Bank of Scotland. The merger resulted in a new holding company, the National and Commercial Banking Group, with 662 branches in Scotland, which all transferred to the Royal Bank name. The holding company was renamed The Royal Bank of Scotland Group in 1979 and became NatWest Group in July 2020.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The expansion of the British Empire in the latter half of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of London as the largest financial centre in the world, attracting Scottish banks to expand southward into England. The first London branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland opened in 1874. However, English banks moved to prevent further expansion by Scottish banks into England; and, after a government committee was set up to examine the matter, the Scottish banks chose to drop their expansion plans. An agreement was reached, under which English banks would not open branches in Scotland and Scottish banks would not open branches in England outside London. This agreement remained in place until the 1960s, although various cross-border acquisitions were permitted.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The Royal Bank's English expansion plans were resurrected after World War I, when it acquired various small English banks, including London-based Drummonds Bank (in 1924), which continued as a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland; Williams Deacon's Bank, based in northwestern England (in 1930); and Glyn, Mills & Co. (in 1939); the English and Welsh branches were reorganised as Williams & Glyn's Bank in 1969, before adopting to the Royal Bank name in 1985.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Royal Bank was the subject of three separate takeover approaches. In 1979, Lloyds Bank, which had previously built up a 16.4% stake in the Royal Bank, made a takeover approach for the remaining shares it did not own. The offer was rejected by the board of directors on the basis that it was detrimental to the bank's operations. However, when the Standard Chartered Bank proposed a merger with the Royal Bank in 1980, the board responded favourably. Standard Chartered Bank was headquartered in London, although most of its operations were in the Far East, and the Royal Bank saw advantages in creating a truly international banking group. Approval was received from the Bank of England, and the two banks agreed to a merger plan that would have seen the Standard Chartered acquire the Royal Bank and keep the UK operations based in Edinburgh. However, the bid was scuppered by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) which tabled a rival offer. The bid by HSBC was not backed by the Bank of England and was subsequently rejected by the Royal Bank's board. However, the British government referred both bids to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission; both were subsequently rejected as being against the public interest.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The Bank did obtain an international partnership with Banco Santander Central Hispano of Spain, each bank taking a 5% stake in the other. However, this arrangement ended in 2005, when Banco Santander Central Hispano acquired UK bank Abbey Nationaland both banks sold their respective shareholdings.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The first international office of the bank was opened in New York in 1960. Subsequent international banks were opened in Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, and Hong Kong. In 1988 the bank acquired Citizens Financial Group, a bank based in Rhode Island, United States. Since then, Citizens has acquired several other American banks and in 2004 acquired Charter One Bank.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: From 1988 to 2015 it owned Citizens Financial Group, a bank in the United States, and from 2005 to 2009 RBS Group was the second-largest shareholder in the Bank of China, itself the world's fifth-largest bank by market capitalisation in February 2008.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Following the implosion of the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2008 while under direction of directors at its Edinburgh headquarters, and its rescue by taxpayer funds, it became a subsidiary of the UK Government.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: On 20 January 2011, Royal Bank of Scotland were fined £28.58 million for anti-competitive practices that were enacted with Barclays in relation to the pricing of loan products for large professional services firms. Also in 2011, Royal Bank of Scotland prevented Basic Account holders from using the ATMs of most rival banks (although they could still use those of NatWest, Tesco, Morrisons and the Post Office).


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Royal Bank of Scotland released a statement on 12 June 2013 that announced a transition in which CEO Stephen Hester would stand down in December 2013 for the financial institution "to return to private ownership by the end of 2014". For his part in the procession of the transition, Hester received 12 months' pay and benefits worth £1.6 million, as well as the potential for £4 million in shares. The Royal Bank of Scotland stated that, as of the announcement, the search for Hester's successor would commence.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Hester was replaced as CEO by New Zealander Ross McEwan, formerly the head of the bank's retail arm, on 1 October 2013. McEwan, who was 56 years old at the start of his tenure, will receive no bonus for his work in 2013 or at the end of 2014, and his pension will be replaced by an annual cash sum equivalent to 35 percent of his salary as CEO.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: In November 2013, Royal Bank of Scotland announced it was in talks to sell a shipping loan in ’Eagle Bulk Shipping Inc.’ worth $800 million. It was also announced in that month that the bank was in talks to sell its equity derivatives business to a buyer rumoured to be BNP Paribas.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: In September 2014, Royal Bank of Scotland announced that they would move their headquarters to London in the event of a Yes vote in the Scottish referendum. Whilst this move would not affect day to day banking services in Scotland, there would be several major ramifications; the key issue being that the Scottish version of Royal Bank of Scotland would become a subsidiary to the London-based holding company. Therefore, tax would be paid chiefly through the London-based company, thus depriving Scotland of significant revenues. This would break a near 300-year period in which the Royal Bank of Scotland has been headquartered in Edinburgh.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: In March 2015, Royal Bank of Scotland agreed to sell its internationally managed private banking and wealth management business to Switzerland's Union Bancaire Privée UBP SA. The sale includes client relationships managed under Coutts and Adam & Co. brands in Switzerland, Monaco, the UAE, Qatar, Singapore and Hong Kong. The terms of the sale were not announced. The operations being sold has CHF 32-billion of client assets under management. Royal Bank of Scotland will continue to offer private banking and wealth management in the British Isles, as well as to international clients with a strong connection to the UK.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: On March 20, 2017, the British paper "The Guardian" reported that hundreds of banks had helped launder KGB-related funds out of Russia, as uncovered by an investigation named Global Laundromat. The Royal Bank of Scotland was listed among the 17 banks in the UK that were "facing questions over what they knew about the international scheme and why they did not turn away suspicious money transfers," as the bank "handled $113.1 million" in Laundromat cash. Other banks facing scrutiny under the investigation included HSBC, NatWest, Lloyds, Barclays and Coutts. Coutts, owned by RBS, had "accepted $32.8m worth of payments via its office in Zurich, Switzerland." NatWest, also owned by RBS, was named for allowing through $1.1 million in related funds.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: In early 2018, The Royal Bank of Scotland Group accounted its plans for restructuring to comply with new UK-wide rules on ring-fencing retail banking operations from investment banking operations. As part of this restructuring, all retail banking assets of the existing Royal Bank of Scotland plc will be transferred to Adam and Company which will assume the Royal Bank of Scotland name in the process. Adam and Company will continue as an RBS private banking brand in Scotland, along the same lines as the Messrs. Drummond and Child & Co. businesses in England.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: As part of the restructuring and brand management, it was decided that NatWest would become RBS Group's primary customer-facing brand in England and Wales. As a result, up to 275 Royal Bank of Scotland branded branches in England and Wales will be closed as they are located close to NatWest branded branches which customers will be able to use for counter services instead.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: On 14 February 2020, it was announced that the holding company of Royal Bank of Scotland (Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc) would be renamed NatWest Group plc later that year, taking the brand under which the majority of its business is delivered. The change took place on 22 July 2020.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: As a consequence of the British Government taking an 81% shareholding in the RBS Group following the 2007–08 financial crisis, the group was required by a European Commission ruling to sell a portion of its business, as the commission regarded the shareholding as state aid.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Royal Bank of Scotland unveiled plans in 2009 to resurrect the dormant Williams and Glyn's brand name in preparation for the divestment of its Royal Bank of Scotland-branded retail banking business in England and its NatWest branches in Scotland.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: On 27 September 2013, the Royal Bank of Scotland Group confirmed it had agreed to sell 308 Royal Bank of Scotland branches in England and Wales and 6 NatWest branches in Scotland to the Corsair consortium. The branches were due to be divested from the group in 2016 as a standalone business operating under the Williams & Glyn name, although, in August 2016, RBS cancelled the spin-off plan, stating that the new bank could not survive independently. It revealed it would instead seek to sell the division to another bank.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: In February 2017, HM Treasury suggested that the bank should abandon the plan to sell the division, and instead focus on initiatives to boost competition within business banking in the United Kingdom. The plan would be subject to approval by the European Commission. A final agreement, known as the "Alternative Remedies Package", was reached with the European Commission in September 2017, allowing RBS Group to retain the Williams & Glyn assets and bringing the sale process to a close.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: In May 2018, it was announced that 162 RBS branches in England or Wales that were to have become Williams & Glyn will be closed, resulting in almost 800 job losses, with customers able to use nearby NatWest branches for counter services instead. The closure of a further 54 branches was announced in September 2018 with an expected loss of 258 jobs.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Up until the middle of the 19th century, privately owned banks in Great Britain and Ireland were permitted to issue their own banknotes, and money issued by provincial Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish banking companies circulated freely as a means of payment. While the Bank of England eventually gained a monopoly for issuing banknotes in England and Wales, Scottish banks retained the right to issue their own banknotes and continue to do so to this day. The Royal Bank of Scotland, along with Clydesdale Bank and Bank of Scotland, still prints its own banknotes.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Notes issued by Scottish banks circulate widely and may be used as a means of payment throughout Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom; although they do not have the status of legal tender they are accepted as promissory notes. "No" paper money is legal tender in Scotland, even that issued by the Bank of England (which is legal tender in England and Wales).


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: From May 2020 RBS began to replace the “Ilay” series with the new “Fabric of Nature” series of polymer banknotes. The first polymer notes, the £5, came into circulation on 27 October 2016. The £5 note features Nan Shepherd on the obverse accompanied by a quote from her book 'The Living Mountain', and the Cairngorms in the background. The reverse shows a pair of mackerel, with an excerpt from the poem ‘The Choice’ by Sorley MacLean.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The second polymer note to be introduced was the £10 note, which entered circulation in 2017. It shows Mary Somerville on the obverse, with a quote from her work 'The Connection of the Physical Sciences', and Burntisland beach in the background. The reverse displays two otters and an excerpt from the poem ‘Moorings’ by Norman MacCaig.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Prior to the current polymer series, the Royal Bank "Ilay" series of banknotes were in circulation, so-called because each denomination featured a picture of Lord Ilay (1682–1761), the first governor of the bank. The image was based on a portrait of Lord Ilay painted in 1744 by the Edinburgh artist Allan Ramsay.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The front of the notes also included an engraving of the facade of Dundas House, the mansion of Sir Laurence Dundas in St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh, which was built by Sir William Chambers in 1774 and later became the bank's headquarters; the bank's coat of arms; and the 1969 arrows logo and branding. The background graphic on both sides of the notes was a radial star design which was based on the ornate ceiling of the banking hall in the old headquarters building, designed by John Dick Peddie in 1857.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: On the back of the notes were images of Scottish castles, with a different castle for each denomination:


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: As of 30th September 2022 the Ilay series was withdrawn, along with all non-polymer banknotes in the United Kingdom.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Occasionally the Royal Bank of Scotland issues special commemorative banknotes to mark particular occasions or to celebrate famous people. The Royal Bank was the first British bank to print commemorative banknotes in 1992 and followed with several subsequent special issues. These notes are much sought-after by collectors and they rarely remain long in circulation. Examples to date have included:


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The Royal Bank of Scotland provides a full range of banking and insurance services to personal, business, and commercial customers. As well as traditional branches, phone, and internet banking, Royal Bank of Scotland has operated "mobile branches" since 1946 using converted vans to serve rural areas. There are currently 19 mobile branches.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The bank is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by both the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. It participates fully in the Faster Payments Service, an initiative to speed up certain payments, launched in 2008.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: In 2006, The Royal Bank of Scotland Group undertook the first trial of PayPass contactless debit and credit cards in Europe. The bank is introducing Visa Debit cards with the technology for current accounts, which can be used to pay for purchases up to £30 by tapping an enabled card on the retailer's terminal. In an effort to enhance security, Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest introduced hand-held devices in 2007 for use with a card to authorise online banking transactions.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Royal Bank of Scotland is a member of the Cheque and Credit Clearing Company Limited, Bankers' Automated Clearing Services Limited, the Clearing House Automated Payment System Limited and the LINK Interchange Network Limited. It is a member of the Financial Ombudsman Service, UK Payments Administration and of the British Bankers' Association; it subscribes to the Lending Code. The bank is covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme with Adam and Company, The One account, Child & Co., Drummonds Bank and Holt's Military Banking under one licence.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The Royal Bank of Scotland Group uses branding developed for the Bank on its merger with the National Commercial Bank of Scotland in 1969. The Group's logo takes the form of an abstract symbol of four inward-pointing arrows known as the ""Daisy Wheel"" and is based on an arrangement of 36 piles of coins in a 6 by 6 square, representing "the accumulation and concentration of wealth by the Group". The "Daisy Wheel" logo was later adopted by Royal Bank of Scotland Group subsidiaries Ulster Bank in Ireland, Citizens Financial Group in the United States and, until it was sold in 2010, payment processing company Worldpay.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: From 2003, the bank began to move away from referring to both the Group brand and its retail banking brand as "The Royal Bank of Scotland", instead of using the "RBS" initialism. This was intended to support the positioning of the bank as a Global financial services player as opposed to its roots as a national bank, however, "The Royal Bank of Scotland" continued to be used alongside the RBS initialism, with both appearing on bank signage.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: In spring 2014 the full bank name returned to print and television advertising in the form of a new logo with the omission of "The". In August 2016, Ross McEwan confirmed that the bank would use the full name for its business in Scotland in lieu of the RBS acronym, to distance the bank from its previous global expansion plans.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Royal Bank of Scotland sponsored the Williams F1 team from 2005 until the end of 2010. They also were the title sponsor for the Canadian Grand Prix from 2005 until the end of 2008. They have supported tennis player Andy Murray since he was aged 13.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: The bonus payments paid to Royal Bank of Scotland staff subsequent to the 2008 United Kingdom bank rescue package caused controversy. Staff bonuses were nearly £1 billion in 2010, even though Royal Bank of Scotland reported losses of £1.1 billion for 2010. More than 100 senior bank executives were paid in excess of £1 million each in bonuses.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Consequently, former CEO Fred Goodwin was stripped of his knighthood in mid-January, and newly appointed CEO Stephen Hester renounced his £1 million bonus after complaints over the bank's performance.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: 82 percent of Royal Bank of Scotland's shares are now owned by the UK government, which bought Royal Bank of Scotland stock for £42 billion, representing 50 pence per share. In 2011, the shares were worth 19 pence, representing a taxpayer book loss of £26 billion. Historically, the Royal Bank of Scotland stock price went from a high of over 6,900 pence in early 2007 (taking into account a 3 for 1 reverse stock split that took place later that year) to around 120 pence February 2009 and up to 187 pence by December 2011. In 2012 RBS shares were consolidated on a 1 for 10 basis. The Stock has not recovered from the financial shock of early 2009 and is currently at 316 pence (30 October 2015.) This equated to a price of just 31.6 pence per pre-consolidation share.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: High street Royal Bank of Scotland branches were targeted by protests, after the bank was challenged over its financing of oil and coal mining by charities such as Platform London, People and Planet and Friends of the Earth. In 2007, Royal Bank of Scotland was promoting itself as "The Oil & Gas Bank", although the website www.oilandgasbank.com was later taken down. A Platform London report criticised the bank's lending to oil and gas companies, estimating that the carbon emissions embedded within Royal Bank of Scotland' project finance reached 36.9 million tonnes in 2005, comparable to Scotland's carbon emissions.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Royal Bank of Scotland provides the financial means for companies to build coal-fired power stations and dig new coal mines at sites throughout the world. Royal Bank of Scotland helped to provide an estimated £8 billion from 2006 to 2008 to the energy corporation E.ON and other coal-utilizing companies. In 2012, 2.8% of Royal Bank of Scotland' total lending was provided to the power, oil and gas sectors combined. According to Royal Bank of Scotland' own figures, half of its deals to the energy sector were to wind power projects; although, this only included project finance and not general commercial loans.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: In 2010, Royal Bank of Scotland promised not to close bank branches where they were the last in town. In 2014, Royal Bank of Scotland changed direction, and closed 44 branches that are the last in town, as branch transactions had fallen by 30% over the last four years.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Royal Bank of Scotland will close 259 more branches across Britain in its latest round of cuts as customers shift to online banking.


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: In October 2016, BBC Newsnight and Buzzfeed published reports from a leaked internal document which showed that RBS had "Systematically Crushed British Businesses" with fines, interest rate hikes and loan withdrawals, often acquiring equity or property at firesale prices, turning a sizeable profit. RBS executives had previously assured Parliament that their Global Restructuring Group (GRG) was not a profit centre. Controversy regarding the GRG was rekindled by the leader of the Liberal Democrats,


title: Royal Bank of Scotland

text: Vince Cable, and others in January 2018. In February 2018, the Financial Conduct Authority released a "Section 166" report from Promontory Financial Services to Nicky Morgan, Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, detailing widespread abuse of SMEs within GRG. This was despite protracted resistance by the FCA to releasing the report.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria, Duke of Bavaria, Franconia and in Swabia, Count Palatine by (the) Rhine ("Rupprecht Maria Luitpold Ferdinand"; English: "Robert Maria Leopold Ferdinand"; 18 May 1869 – 2 August 1955), was the last heir apparent to the Bavarian throne. During the first half of the First World War he commanded the 6th Army on the Western Front. From August 1916, he commanded Army Group Rupprecht of Bavaria, which occupied the sector of the front opposite the British Expeditionary Force.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: Rupprecht was born in Munich, the eldest of the thirteen children of Ludwig III, the last King of Bavaria, and of Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria-Este, a niece of Duke Francis V of Modena. He was a member of the lineage of both Louis XIV of France and William the Conqueror. As a direct descendant of Henrietta of England, daughter of Charles I of England, he was claimant to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland in the Jacobite succession. His early education from the age of seven was conducted by Freiherr Rolf Kreusser, an Anglo-Bavarian. In his youth, he spent much of his time at "Schloss Leutstetten", Starnberg, and at the family's villa near Lindau, Lake Constance, where he was able to develop a keen interest in sports. His education was traditional and conservative, but he became the first member of the royal house of Bavaria to spend time at a public school, when he was educated at the "Maximilian-Gymnasium" in Munich, where he spent four years. Apart from his academic studies and his training in riding and dancing, at school he was also obliged to learn a trade, and he chose carpentry.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: Rupprecht's paternal grandfather, Luitpold, became de facto ruler of Bavaria when King Ludwig II and his successor Otto both were declared insane in 1886. Rupprecht's own position changed somewhat through these events as it became clear that he was likely to succeed to the Bavarian throne one day.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: After graduating from high school, he entered the Bavarian Army's "Infanterie-Leibregiment" as a Second Lieutenant. He interrupted his military career to study at the universities of Munich and Berlin from 1889 to 1891. He rose to the rank of a Colonel and became the commanding officer of the "2nd Infanterie Regiment Kronprinz" but found enough opportunity to travel extensively to the Middle East, India, Japan and China. His early journeys were made with his Adjutant, Otto von Stetten. Later he was accompanied by his first wife.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: At the age of 31, Rupprecht married his kinswoman Duchess Marie Gabrielle in Bavaria, with whom he had five children before her early death in 1912 at the age of 34.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: In 1906, Rupprecht was made commander of the Bavarian I Army Corps, with the rank of lieutenant general of the infantry, promoted to full general in 1913.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: In 1912, Luitpold was succeeded in the position of "Prince Regent" by his son Ludwig. On 5 November 1913, Ludwig was made king by vote of the Bavarian Senate, becoming Ludwig III. This decision also made Rupprecht the Crown Prince of Bavaria.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: Rupprecht and Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia each commanded an army on the western front (the Sixth Army and the Fifth Army, respectively) and were directly involved in the implementation of the Schlieffen Plan.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: After the outbreak of World War I in July 1914, Rupprecht took command (2 August 1914) of the German Sixth Army in Lorraine. While much of the German army participated in the Schlieffen plan, the Crown Prince led his troops in the Battle of Lorraine (14 to 25 August 1914). His appointment to command the Sixth Army came as a result of his royal position, but the level of study he had performed before he took command was a factor behind his successful direction of the Sixth Army, and he proved a highly able commander. Rupprecht's army gave way to the French attack in August 1914, in the Battle of Lorraine, and then launched a counteroffensive on 20 August. Rupprecht failed to break through the French lines. In fact he was ordered by German General Staff to only occupy the French forces in that region. It was his idea to attack more aggressively. He later commanded the 6th Army in Northern France (until August 1916), and remained on the Western Front during the stalemate that would last until the end of the war. Only a few days after the battle, his oldest son, Luitpold, died of polio in Munich (27 August 1914).


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: During the spring of 1915, Rupprecht sent an answer to General Moritz von Bissing, the Governor-General of Belgium, responding to Bissing's inquiry about Bavaria's opinion on the "Belgian question". Rupprecht envisaged an economic and military association of Belgium with Germany by introducing the Netherlands (enlarged by the Flemish areas of Belgium and northern France) and Luxembourg (enlarged by Belgian Luxembourg) as new federal states of the German Empire. To the Kingdom of Prussia, Rupprecht suggested other areas of northern France, Walloon Belgium with Liege and Namur, and the salient of the Netherlands round Maastricht. The Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine and the rest of Lorraine was to be partitioned between Bavaria and Prussia. Rupprecht aimed to reduce Prussia's hegemonic role in the Reich by building a sort of an imperial triumvirate of power between Prussia, Bavaria and the Netherlands. Likewise when Moltke the Younger ordered Bavarian troops to defend Prussia from the East, he declined. As a result, troops had to be withdrawn from the Belgian front - a more difficult undertaking.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: In November 1915 Hermann von Kuhl became Rupprecht's new Chief of Staff. This work relationship would last for the remainder of the war.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: Rupprecht achieved the rank of field marshal (Generalfeldmarschall) in July 1916 and on 28 August that year assumed command of Army Group Rupprecht, consisting of the 1st, 2nd, 6th and 7th armies. Rupprecht has been considered by some one of the best royal commanders in the Imperial German Army of World War I, possibly even the only one to deserve his command. Rupprecht came to the conclusion - much earlier than most other German generals (towards the end of 1917) - that the war could not be won, given the ever-increasing material advantage of the Allies. He also opposed the "scorched-earth" policy during withdrawals, but his royal position made a resignation on those grounds impossible for him, even though he threatened it. He eventually resigned from his command on 11 November 1918 - the day of the armistice.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: He became engaged to the much younger Princess Antonia of Luxembourg in 1918, but Germany's capitulation delayed their marriage, and the engagement was postponed again.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: Max Immelmann, one of the most famous German First World War flying aces, referred in a letter written on 25 June 1915 to a visit by Rupprecht to an airfield to inspect the new Fokker Eindecker aircraft.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: Primarily to see these fighting machines, yesterday the Crown Prince of Bavaria visited the field and inspected us and "Abteilung" 20. Director Fokker, the constructor of the combat aircraft, was presented to him.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: On 12 November 1918, in the wake of civil unrest in the last days of the war, Rupprecht's father, Ludwig III, promulgated the Anif declaration releasing his officials, officers and soldiers from their oaths. Although he did not formally abdicate (and some loyalists would continue to refer to Ludwig as King), the declaration was interpreted by the government of Bavaria as an abdication, making Bavaria a republic and ending 738 years of Wittelsbach rule; Rupprecht thus lost his chance to rule Bavaria. Rupprecht escaped to Tyrol in fear of reprisals from the brief communist regime in Bavaria under Kurt Eisner but returned in September 1919. While away from Bavaria, he succeeded his mother, Maria Theresa of Austria-Este, the last Queen of Bavaria, as the Jacobite heir. This occurred upon her death on 3 February 1919. As such, under his anglicized name, he would be King Robert I of England and King Robert IV of Scotland, although he never claimed these crowns and "strongly discouraged" anyone from claiming them on his behalf.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: The changed political situation however allowed him finally to marry Princess Antonia of Luxembourg on 7 April 1921. The nuncio to Bavaria, Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII, officiated at the ceremony.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: Shortly after the 1922 Washington Naval Conference, he made a statement regarding the possible ban of aerial bombing, poison gas, sea blockades and long range guns, blaming them for a majority of civilian casualties during the last war. He also advocated Germany's participation in future peace conferences, and he dismissed claims that Kaiser Wilhelm II was to blame for the First World War.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: While opposed to the Weimar Republic and never having renounced his rights to the throne, Rupprecht envisioned a constitutional monarchy for Bavaria. Upon his father's death in October 1921, Rupprecht declared his claim to the throne since his father had never formally renounced his crown in the Anif declaration. While never crowned king, he did become the head of the House of Wittelsbach after his father's death. He formed the "Wittelsbacher Ausgleichfond" in 1923, which was an agreement with the state of Bavaria leaving the most important of the Wittelsbach palaces, like Neuschwanstein and Linderhof, to the Bavarian people. Afterwards Rupprecht became critical of wars like World War I. Rupprecht once said to the New York Times that the Washington Naval Conference would be able to make future warfare more humane. Rupprecht added that future conferences would entirely abolish chemical warfare.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: Rupprecht was never enticed to join the Nazis in Germany, despite Hitler's attempts to win him over through Ernst Röhm and promises of royal restoration. The anti-Catholic stance of men like Erich Ludendorff might have been an influence. He helped persuade Gustav von Kahr to not support Hitler during the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler confided in private to a personal dislike of the Crown Prince. The Crown Prince in turn confessed to King George V at a lunch in London in the summer of 1934 that he considered Hitler to be insane.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: With the worsening of the Great Depression in 1932, a plan was floated to give Rupprecht dictatorial powers in Bavaria under the title of "Staatskommissar". The plan attracted support from a wide coalition of parties, including the SPD and the post-war Bavarian "Minister-President" (First Minister) Wilhelm Hoegner but the legal appointment of Hitler as "Reichskanzler" in 1933 by Hindenburg and the hesitant Bavarian government under Heinrich Held ended all hopes for the idea.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: Rupprecht continued to believe that restoration of the monarchy was possible, an opinion he voiced to the British ambassador Eric Phipps in 1935.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: Rupprecht was forced into exile in Italy in December 1939 (the last straw being the confiscation of "Schloß Leutstetten" by the Nazis) where he stayed as a guest of King Victor Emmanuel, residing mostly in Florence. He and his family were barred from returning to Germany. He continued to harbor the idea of the restoration of the Bavarian monarchy, in a possible union with Austria as an independent Southern Germany. In a memorandum in May 1943, he voiced his opinion that Germany would be completely defeated in the war and hoped to spare the German people from the worst when the Nazi regime finally fell. He even mentioned his ambition for the German crown, which had been held by the House of Wittelsbach in the past.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: In October 1944, when Germany occupied Hungary, Rupprecht's wife and children were captured, while he, still in Italy, evaded arrest. They were first imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Oranienburg, Brandenburg. In April 1945, they were moved to the Dachau concentration camp, where they were liberated by the United States Army. Antonia never recovered completely from the captivity, and died in 1954 in Switzerland, having vowed never to return to Germany after her ordeal. She was buried in Rome but her heart was, complying with Wittelsbach tradition, enshrined in the "Gnadenkapelle" (Chapel of the Miraculous Image) at Altötting.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: Rupprecht continued to advocate the restoration of the Bavarian monarchy upon his return but found no support from the US occupation authorities who, however, treated him courteously. General Dwight D. Eisenhower provided a special plane to fly him back to Munich in September 1945 and he returned to "Schloss Leutstetten".


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: Of the 170 members of the Bavarian parliament, 70 declared themselves to be monarchists in September 1954, a clear sign of support for the Crown Prince.


title: Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria

text: Upon his death in 1955 at Schloss Leutstetten at the age of 86, he was treated like a deceased monarch, receiving a state funeral. His life had spanned the independent Kingdom of Bavaria, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, Allied-occupied Germany, and the establishment of West Germany and East Germany. He is buried in the crypt of the Theatinerkirche in Munich near his grandfather Prince Luitpold and great-great-grandfather King Maximilian I, between his first wife Duchess Maria Gabrielle and his eldest son Prince Luitpold.