ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND is preparing a boardroom clearout to purge the company of directors linked with the reign of Sir Fred Goodwin, its former chief executive.

BP chairman Peter Sutherland along with former civil servants Sir Steve Robson and Jim Currie are all thought to be preparing to step down. Bob Scott, the senior independent director, and Colin Buchan, who has been on the board since 2002, are also expected to go but they may delay their exit until replacement candidates are found.

A final decision on the timing of these departures will be made when Sir Philip Hampton takes over as chairman. The company has already drawn up a list of names from which it will pick three nonexecutives.

The government, which owns 70% of the bank, has made it clear it wants to see change at the head of the company. Stephen Hester, who replaced Goodwin as chief executive, has already identified the senior staff who will have to leave and those who will be promoted.

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The clearout comes as The Sunday Times can reveal RBS is preparing to place £50 billion to £100 billion of loans into the government’s new bank-insurance scheme.

The bank’s advisers are locked in negotiations with the Treasury over the terms of the deal, designed to protect RBS from significant further losses and allow it to restart lending to British companies.

The move comes as Hester puts the finishing touches to a radical restructuring. As many as 30,000 jobs, out of 170,000, could go in the next three to five years as he scales back the bank’s network. A total of 10,000 jobs have already been lost.

Hester intends to take risk out of the bank’s balance sheet, sell noncore operations and shut down businesses that sold problematic products that almost broke the bank. This is concentrated in the wholesale-banking division which was formerly headed by Johnny Cameron. The plan will be unveiled to the bank’s board in two weeks’ time at an all-day meeting. RBS will maintain a global network of commercial-banking operations, but it will pull out of a number of countries around the world – thought to include Pakistan, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Uzbekistan. In Asia it is likely to focus on creating a hub.

RBS, which has more than £2 trillion of assets, is being used as a guinea pig for the government’s loss insurance rescue scheme. A deal is expected to be hammered out with RBS in the next four weeks so that Treasury officials can open negotiations with Lloyds Banking Group and Barclays on joining the scheme.

Although the final terms are yet to be decided, the government is likely to insist that RBS takes the first 10% of any further losses. RBS is looking to put good as well as bad assets into the scheme.

The Financial Services Authority has also allowed banks to run their tier-one capital ratios down to 6% as they absorb losses in the recession. The move helps RBS and Barclays which can use a further £20 billion of retained capital before having to ask shareholders for more cash.

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