There may be a new force on the investment banking scene in Australia in a few months, assuming the takeover by Malaysia's CIMB Group Holdings of the equity capital markets and corporate finance business of Royal Bank of Scotland goes ahead as planned.The credentials of this south-east Asian enterprise, however, are not well known, and nor is the highly political business history of what is now Malaysia's second largest bank.With around US$90 billion in assets, CIMB scrapes into some rankings of the world's "top 100" banks. A little more than a third of these assets are outside Malaysia in the markets of its immediate neighbours, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia.Under a strategic direction set by its well-connected chief executive, Nazir Razak, the business is now seeking to achieve a long-held aim of earning more than half its revenue outside of Malaysia.Nazir's long-term ambition for CIMB appears to be to transform the group into a pan-Asian financial services firm, one that competes with HSBC, Standard Chartered and Citi for cross-border business. Australia's ANZ is another regional challenger pursuing a similar plan.Nazir himself has spent the better part of the last two years based in the UK, where he has remained CEO of his bank while pursuing post-graduate studies at Oxford University. It is likely that, apart from overseeing the operations at CIMB, he has also been laying the groundwork with contacts in the City of London for the bank's present investment in RBS.Some commentators see the RBS acquisition as a strategic move into Australia's pool of capital (represented by $1 trillion under management on behalf of superannuation funds).However, CIMB and other Malaysian financial institutions have shown limited interest in the past in developing their expertise in investment banking outside of Malaysia, despite their own history of reliance on this service for a substantial proportion of their domestic revenue.(A report by Standard & Poor's released this week notes that CIMB and other major banks do depend on domestic investment banking transactions for the bulk of their non-interest income).In 2007, CIMB was reported to be interested in developing the market in Australia for Islamic or Sharia-compliant banking services, but little seems to have been done. Indeed, there has been little interest among Australian borrowers in using such facilities. Then there is the difference in business cultures.While Australian financiers have gained expertise in taking on and managing risky mining ventures, their Malaysian counterparts seldom venture beyond property and related investments.Acquisition is sometimes seen as a means of gaining skills, but in financial services this method can fail given the mobility of staff. One recent example is the loss of skilled staff at Nomura following the takeover of the Asian business of Lehman Brothers (many of whom left after receiving their first bonuses). CIMB's origins are as an inward-looking investment bank that bought a number of retail banks whose operations are limited to Malaysia. CIMB must also wear the history of being a firm with deep links to the Malaysian government.Khazanah, the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund