Royal Bank of Scotland on Wednesday said it had agreed to sell its Pakistan unit to Faysal Bank for ?41m ($51m) after a previous attempt to sell the business collapsed.
The sale of a 99.4 per cent stake in RBS Pakistan is part of a wider divestment of assets by RBS, which is majority-owned by the British government, reported The Financial TImes.
RBS draws up shortlist for £4bn asset sale - Jun-08RBS nears ?400m private equity sale - May-23RBS said last year following a strategic review that it was withdrawing from retail and commercial banking in Asia to concentrate on wholesale banking in the region.
In August RBS agreed to sell assets in Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Vietnam to ANZ, the Australian lender. The bank has also inked an agreement with HSBC to divest retail and commercial assets in China, India and Malaysia, that is awaiting regulatory approval.
RBS previously agreed to sell its Pakistani unit to MCB Bank, another Pakistan bank, for $85m. But the UK lender said in January that the deal had lapsed because it had not received the necessary regulatory approval by the end of 2009.
Pakistan's central bank in Karachi said at the time that it had decided not to clear the deal because of a dispute over MCB depositing its shares as security.
RBS has also stepped up its asset sell-off programme in other parts of the world. The Financial Times reported this month that the bank was shortlisting bidders for RBS Sempra Commodities' North America business, which focuses on natural gas and power trading and is worth about $2bn. It is also looking at bids for its payment processing arm that could fetch about £2.5bn.
RBS Pakistan is listed on exchanges in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.