Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has ruled out any sale of its stake in Bank of China (BoC), in spite of its capital difficulties, and intends to press ahead with its Chinese expansion, according to one of the UK bank's senior executives.
The value of RBS's 5 per cent stake in BoC has trebled to £2.4 billion (€3 billion) since it made the investment in 2005, fuelling speculation that RBS could sell out and focus on expanding the Chinese operations of ABN Amro, the Dutch lender it acquired last year as part of a break-up bid.
However, Gordon Pell, RBS chairman of regional markets, has said the bank remained committed to its relationship with the mainland's second-largest lender, which includes formal co-operation agreements in credit cards and wealth management.
His comments are a clear sign of RBS's determination to push ahead in China at a time when the bank is selling assets.
At the time of its £12 billion rights issue in April, RBS executives stressed a sale of the BoC stake would not be part of the bank's capital-raising effort.
Mr Pell signalled RBS could keep the BoC stake for many years. "In China it is important to pay attention to long-term relationships. If you think that you can charge in and out then you have misread how to do business in the country," he said.
RBS has opened two wealth management branches in co-operation with BoC, although it now appears unlikely the pair will reach their longer-term target of six.
BoC is opening its own wealth management branches while RBS has inherited the 13-strong mainland wealth management branch network of ABN, which boasts €1 billion in assets under management. - ( Financial Times service)
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VR3765MFOBH2NMV2QNICYDF67M.png)