RBS Nears Branch Sale As Part Of Bailout Agreement

Late last week, The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc (NYSE:RBS) (LON:RBS) reportedly informed the U.S. private equity (PE) firms JC Flowers and Apollo Management that their joint bid to acquire 316 of its branches has been rejected – bringing down the number of bidders left in the race for the branch sale (dubbed ‘Project Rainbow’) to three. [1] The global banking group which is majority owned by the U.K. government, was required to sell the branches spread across England, Wales and Scotland as part of its bailout agreement with the European Commission (EC) in 2009, and has been working hard to get them off its books for nearly…