Royal Bank of Scotland will pull its corporate and institutional banking operations out of 25 countries in central and eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa amid a drastic scale-down of its services.
RBS is exploring options for the sale of these operations in markets such as the Czech Republic, Russia, the Middle East and Africa, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Poland, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. The bank will consider winding down the operations if buyers are not found.
The bank will also cut its presence substantially in Asia and the United States, a spokeswoman for the bank said on Monday.
She did not comment on the exact countries in CEEMEA RBS will be pulling out of.
The bank’s exposure to the region, as well as central Asia and institutions such as the World Bank, was 19.1 billion pounds in 2013. This represented 3.4 per cent of its 573 billion pounds of credit risk assets, according to the bank’s report for that year.
RBS also had 1.7 billion pounds of exposure to CEEMEA’s oil and gas industry at the end of 2014.
