Blackstone and Wellcome Trust in bid for RBS branches
Despite the fact that Virgin Money would appear to have been the front runner in the minds of many people in relation to the proposed sale of 318 Royal Bank of Scotland branches, a new name has been thrown into the hat. A joint bid from Blackstone and the Wellcome Trust is rumored to have been made earlier this week and we will soon find out the identity of firm bidders for the branch network.
It is believed that the network of branches could raise as much as £2 billion although more conservative estimates are around £1 billion. The sale of the network was forced upon Royal Bank of Scotland by the European Union in exchange for the taxpayer-funded bailout of the operation last year. The bank has now fallen from what many regarded as the largest bank in the world to something of a more modest size after selling-off a number of peripheral subsidiaries over last few months. There is no doubt that the Royal Bank of Scotland of the future will be very different to the Royal Bank of Scotland of the past.
While the emergence of new bidders for the operation comes as no surprise to those in the financial markets it will be interesting to see who wants to acquire the branch network the most and what price they are willing to pay.
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