Royal Bank of Scotland plans to sell its banking business in India

Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (RBS) plans to exit its pri­vate bank­ing busi­ness in India as part of a glob­al deci­sion to sell inter­na­tion­al oper­a­tions of its pri­vate bank­ing arm Coutts, which man­ages near­ly $36 bil­lion in client assets in mar­kets, includ­ing Hong Kong, Sin­ga­pore, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. 

The bank is plan­ning to sell the pri­vate bank­ing and wealth busi­ness. The first infor­ma­tion report has not been cir­cu­lat­ed yet. How­ev­er, the bank is expect­ed to begin the sale process in the next few months 

RBS pri­vate bank­ing India has four offices spread across Mum­bai, New Del­hi, Ben­galu­ru and Chen­nai with 85 employ­ees. The British bank, in which the state holds 81 per cent shares fol­low­ing a bailout in 2008, is under pres­sure to con­sol­i­date its over­seas oper­a­tions and focus on the home mar­ket to sup­port eco­nom­ic growth. The UK gov­ern­ment had offered a finan­cial pack­age of £45 bil­lion to the bank to remain afloat fol­low­ing the glob­al finan­cial crisis. 

RBS had got the Indi­an assets of ABN Amro Bank as part of a 3‑way split of the Dutch bank after it was acquired along with Ban­co San­tander of Spain, and For­tis of Bel­gium in 2007.  The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had object­ed to RBS oper­at­ing ABN Amro’s Indi­an busi­ness under two sep­a­rate enti­ties, RBS and RBS Coutts. The reg­u­la­tor was of the view that Coutts is a sep­a­rate enti­ty and approval for use of the brand name would effec­tive­ly mean allow­ing a back­door entry for a bank. Hence, the UK bank brand­ed its pri­vate bank­ing busi­ness in the coun­try as RBS Pri­vate Banking.