The chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland greeted an early return to operating profitability by the major lender, which has already hit the two and a half billion cost savings target set for this year.

Stephen Hester stated that the recovery at the bank is running well ahead of schedule after a year in which it made good advancement with efforts to increase returns from its core business and quit riskier areas.

The bank which is located in Edinburgh saw an operating profit of £1.9bn in 2010, boosted by a good performance in UK retail banking. This happened in spite of seeing £1.2bn impairment losses on its Ulster Bank loan book, which swelled under Sir Fred Goodwin. By contrast, it made an operating loss of £6.1bn in 2009.

Mr. Hester further said that Royal Bank will possibly recruit around fifteen thousand people this year, mainly to bank branches and the central business services operations where products like loans are supervised.

Mr. Hester has said earlier that most of the things in terms of job reductions have been done by Royal. But he emphasized that RBS is still engaged in a massive restructuring process and did not negate the possibility of further job losses. RBS has reduced twenty one thousand jobs all over the UK since Mr. Hester came to the post in 2009.

The profit figure was given after Royal paid nine hundred and fifty million pounds worth bonuses to staff in its investment banking division, down from £1.3bn in 2009.

After taking account of one billion pound required for restructuring costs and the one and a half billion pounds the bank paid to belong to the asset protection scheme that the Government started to insure lenders, Royal Bank made a loss of £1.1bn. It lost £3.6bn on this measure in 2009.