MUFG to buy RBS asset fin portfolio

Japanese banking group Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group is poised to buy a $6.4 billion portfolio of project finance loans from Royal Bank of Scotland in the latest move by the part-nationalised UK bank to offload legacy assets, says a media report.

Attributing to people close to the talks, the Financial Times reported that a deal could be finalised between RBS and Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, a MUFG subsidiary, in the coming weeks.

The portfolio is understood to be largely oil, gas and power assets in Europe and elsewhere in the world, although there is also a portion of UK infrastructure finance included in the deal, the report noted.
    
The transaction would mark the first major sale of oil and gas financing assets since the financial crisis.
    
RBS, in which the UK government has a 70 per cent shareholding following a vast state bail-out, has been shrinking its balance sheet aggressively, shedding swathes of 'non-core' assets over the past year.
    
Under Stephen Hester, the chief executive brought in to clean up the bank following its bail-out by the state, RBS identified 258 billion pounds of its assets as non-core. By the end of June, it had reduced that tally to 174 billion pounds.