DUBAI: Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has sold around AED3 billion ($816.8 million) of loans belonging to companies in the United Arab Emirates to Commercial Bank of Dubai (CBD), both banks said.
RBS is shrinking its corporate and institutional banking business in the Middle East, Africa, parts of Europe and Asia as the lender, 79-percent owned by the British government, refocuses on its home market.
But it is the first time a sale of RBS’s corporate assets in the region has been announced.
The portfolio of loans sold to CBD were mostly to large UAE-based companies, CBD said in a statement. They held “excellent” credit profiles, it added. The transaction was expected to be complete this month, with the bank using its own funds for the purchase, CBD added.
Over the past decade, the UAE represented fertile ground for RBS’s overseas expansion as a booming economy encouraged it to make loans to large state-controlled companies such as Dubai World and Dubai Group.
Both of those companies had debt troubles after the 2008 financial crisis.
RBS sells $817m of UAE company loans to Dubai bank
