Royal Bank of Scotland’s move to exit its corporate loans and debt capital markets (DCM) business in the Middle East and Africa is part of chief executive officer Ross McEwan’s decision last February to make RBS a smaller, more focused bank.

Bloomberg/Dubai


Royal Bank of Scotland Group, the UK’s largest taxpayer-owned lender, is exiting its corporate loans and debt capital markets (DCM) business in the Middle East and Africa.
The move is part of chief executive officer Ross McEwan’s decision last February to make RBS a smaller, more focused bank, an RBS spokeswoman said in an e-mailed response to questions from Bloomberg News, without giving more information.
McEwan, 57, has been cutting back investment-banking operations and focusing on domestic customers to reverse six straight years of losses. Jacco Keijzer, RBS’s head of debt capital markets for the Middle East and Africa based in Dubai, left the lender earlier this month, the spokeswoman said.
The lender’s loan book, which runs into several billions of dollars, has been broken up and is being offered in parts after a sale as a whole elicited no response, according to two people with knowledge of the offer, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The bank said in August that it was considering selling the international arm of its Coutts private bank to focus on wealthy UK clients. Other UK-based banks have also pulled out of the region. Barclays agreed to sell its retail banking business in the UAE in April to Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank for 650mn dirhams ($177mn). Lloyds Banking Group sold its consumer and commercial-banking business in the UAE to HSBC Holdings for $769mn in 2012, while RBS itself sold its retail banking business to Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank in 2010.
RBS is one of the biggest lenders to state-owned Dubai World, which roiled global markets in 2009 by announcing plans to freeze payments on about $26bn of debt.


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