Royal Bank of Scotland has announced a £950m writedown following upheaval of US subprime mortgage markets.

In a trading statement reporting its annual results, RBS stated that it had also made a £250m writedown on its leveraged finance portfolio.

The bank’s CE, Sir Fred Goodwin, described the estimate as ‘conservative’, the Telegraph reported.

‘The write-downs are assumptions based on the whole life of those instruments, but of course we will revisit the estimate,’ he said.

Sir Fred said he could not rule out further writedowns.

Earlier this week, analysts predicted the bank would writedown up to £1.9bn, and further speculated about writedowns from other UK banks, including Alliance & Leicester.

Further reading:

UK banks face further writedowns

Subprime could be 'as bad as Enron'

Ex-SEC chief: Disclose more but leave accounting rules alone