About a dozen potential bidders for Coutts International have signed privacy agreements with Britain’s largest taxpayer-owned lender, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the details are confidential. First-round offers are due around Dec. 12 and the unit could fetch $600 million to $900 million, the person added. An RBS spokesman declined to comment.
RBS Chief Executive Officer Ross McEwan, 57, is eliminating thousands of jobs, cutting about 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) in costs and focusing on wealthy clients in the U.K. as he seeks to reverse six straight annual losses. The Edinburgh-based lender earlier this year raised $3 billion by selling shares in its Citizens Financial Group Inc. (CFG)
Shares in RBS fell 1.3 percent to 395 pence at 10:20 a.m. in London trading. They’ve gained 17 percent this year, making them the best performer among Britain’s largest five lenders.
RBS was examining options including a sale, joint ventures
or merging Coutts International, according to a memo to employees in August. The business had 32.6 billion Swiss francs ($33 billion) of assets under management at the end of 2013.
Pedestrians walk past a branch of Coutts & Co., the private banking division of the... Read More
DBS, HSBC
RBS is being advised on the sale process by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said a separate person with knowledge of the matter. A spokesman for Goldman Sachs in London declined to comment.The lender isn’t selling the U.K. arm of Coutts, which counts Queen Elizabeth II among its customers. The private bank has roots in 1692, before the Bank of England was founded.
Companies that may bid for the non-U.K. parts of Coutts include DBS Group Holdings Ltd. (DBS), Southeast Asia’s largest lender, people familiar said this month. The Singapore bank is working with Citigroup Inc. as it studies a potential bid.
Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN), HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), J. Safra Sarasin Holding AG, Bank of Montreal, BNP Paribas SA (BNP), Julius Baer Group Ltd. and Malayan Banking Bhd. (MAY) are also among 10 potential bidders for the division in a sale that could raise about $1 billion, Reuters reported yesterday, citing people with knowledge of the matter it didn’t identify.
Swiss Banks
Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo SpA (ISP) would be interested in buying Coutts if the entire business, including its U.K. operation and brand, were put up for sale, Chief Executive Officer Carlo Messina said last month. He doesn’t rule out a purchase of the international arm, he added.
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc CEO Ross McEwan. RBS was examining options including a... Read More
Other Swiss banks have also signaled interest. Zeno Staub, CEO of Vontobel Holding AG (VONN), told reporters on Sept. 11 that Coutts would be among assets that the lender would be most interested in. Boris Collardi, CEO of Julius Baer, told Gulf Business in an interview published last week that the bank may not participate in an auction for the Coutts unit, adding that “if the price is right, you always have to look at it.”
A price of at least 500 million pounds is “more likely to appeal to other more aggressive players,” analysts including Jonas Floriani and Mark Phin at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods wrote in a note dated Nov. 24. “Although we believe that both Vontobel and Julius Baer are well positioned and capitalized to absorb Coutts International assets, we think it is unlikely that they will enter a pricing war for the business.”
Spokesmen for J. Safra Sarasin, Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas’s wealth-management unit, HSBC’s private bank and Julius Baer declined to comment.
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