RBS exec suspects UK to start selling stake in 2012

Britain could start selling its 83% stake in Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in 2012, a senior company executive said on Monday.

"I suspect it will be in 2012," RBS Asia Pacific Chief Executive John McCormick told Reuters in an interview, adding the move would likely depend on the bank's share price.

The Sunday Telegraph, citing sources close to the process, reported earlier in the month that Britain may start selling its stake as early as the first half of 2012, targeted at institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East and Asia.

The government finished with stakes of 83% in RBS and around 40% in rival Lloyds after bailing out both banks with billions of pounds worth of taxpayers' money during the credit crisis.

McCormick also said he expects Asia to account for one fifth of its global wholesale and investment banking revenue in five years, up from 14% currently.

"You can see America and Europe have gone flat and you can see Asia increasing. We want to become a bigger part of the bigger pie," McCormick said in the interview in the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi, where RBS launched a brokerage joint venture with Guolian Securities Co.

RBS has disposed of its retail banking business in Asia to focus on its core markets in the United States and Europe.

In China, RBS transferred its retail banking business to Singapore's DBS Group last year, but has preserved its wholesale and corporate banking businesses including a commercial lender, a trust venture and a futures brokerage venture.

Source: Business Standard