SINGAPORE: The Royal Bank of Scotland Group has launched the sale of private bank Coutts International and has invited at least 10 potential suitors, including Credit Suisse, Julius Baer and Malayan Banking Bhd to participate in an auction.
RBS sale could fetch about $1 billion for bailed out by the British government during the 2008 global financial crisis. Coutts International, which counts Queen Elizabeth as a customer, manages about $36 billion of which about a third comes from Asia.
RBS and its adviser Goldman Sachs have sent out sale documents containing financial and other details of the business to companies including Singapore lenders DBS Group Holdings Ltd and United Overseas Bank Ltd, Societe Generale, HSBC, Bank J Safra Sarasin, BNP Paribas, Canada’s Bank of Montreal among others, the people who had knowledge of the matter.
Societe Generale, Bank of Montreal and RBS did not respond. Officials from Credit Suisse, Julius Baer, Maybank, BNP, HSBC, United Overseas Bank, DBS and Sarasin declined to comment.
Further the sale of Coutts International will help RBS, which is owned by the British government, to focus on domestic lending. The potential sale comes after French bank Societe Generale sold its Asia private bank for about $250 million earlier this year to Singapore’s DBS.
