The Royal Bank of Scotland that is 70% owned by the UK Tax Payer, has had a programme of reducing its balance sheet. The bank has sold assets all over the world as it becomes a UK focussed lender.
Looking at the annual report that was published on the 26th Feb 2016 once can see the real contraction in the bank
http://investors.rbs.com/~/media/Files/R/RBS-IR/results-center/q4_results-26-Feb-2016.pdf
Year: 2016 2015 2014
£m £m £m
Total assets: 815,408 876,684 1,051,019
Customer deposits: 343,186 346,267 354,288
Derivatives: 254,705 288,905 349,805
loans to customers: 306,334 311,383 334,251
Wholesale funding: 59,000 66,000 90,000
One can see from a few metrics that I have pulled of the report, it is reducing its reliance on wholesale funding, also reducing the loans given out to customers.
in 2008, the balance sheet was over £2 Trillion, now it is £0.815 Trillion
UK GDP is about £1.5 Trillion, so the RBS Balance Sheet is 54% of UK GDP.
It is still a massive bank.