State-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland said on Thursday that it had signed a preliminary agreement to sell some of its Asian assets to Malaysian financial group CIMB Group Holdings for an undisclosed fee. "We can confirm RBS has signed an memorandum of understanding with CIMB" for the sale, an RBS spokesman told AFP. He added that the assets included corporate finance businesses as well as certain equity instruments.
It comes after the Edinburgh-based lender had last week revealed that net losses ballooned to almost £2.0 billion at RBS in 2011 on the Greek debt crisis, restructuring costs and compensation linked to insurance mis-selling.