Commonwealth Bank has announced plans to internalise the management of three real estate investment trusts. The bank announced yesterday that it had made indicative, non-binding proposals to the board of Commonwealth Managed Investments Ltd to sell the management rights to the trusts.The three trusts, Commonwealth Property Office Fund, CFS Retail Property Trust Group and Kiwi Income Property Trust, have a combined asset value of around A$9 billion.The Wall Street Journal quoted the managing director of White Funds Management, Angus Gluskie, saying he believed the move was motivated by a desire to reduce capital intensive exposures that did not deliver high rates of return.Fairfax Media cited a research report by JP Morgan property analyst, Richard Jones, which said the trigger for such changes was Basel III; bank capital requirements for listed equity investments have doubled.The bank stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars from the sale of the management rights but will lose long-term fee income.Other groups, including Macquarie Group, have sold property trust management rights since the financial crisis.