RBS sells in Asia, stays in Australia

RBS confirmed to the Financial Review that it's Australian businesses, including ABN Amro Morgans, were regarded as core and so were not on the market, as many of the Asian assets of RBS now are.

On the other hand the RBS stake in ABN Amro Craigs in New Zealand is on the market.

RBS late yesterday published its financial statements for 2008, one of the glamour horrors of the financial crisis. RBS also provided a degree of clarity over which assets it regarded as core and which were in the non-core or bad bank, and either being run down or are for sale.

The RBS businesses in Asia - largely acquired through the takeover in 2007 of ABN Amro - will all be transferred to the non-core bank.

Since RBS hit strife more than a year ago there's been plenty of speculation that ANZ may end up in a position to buy some, or even all, of this network at a cheap price.

Whether there's much merit in the businesses is debatable. According to the RBS review, "the franchises are thinly spread and in general have not yet achieved significant scale."

The main RBS businesses in the region are in India, Pakistan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong,
Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

The statutory accounts for RBS shows these businesses generated 1.17 billion pounds in revenue in 2008 and 127 million pounds of profit. Pro-forma accounts, which show the RBS accounts as if the good bank/bad bank split were already implemented, show the Asian businesses lost 113 million pounds.