Royal Bank of Scotland said it will no longer provide cash management and trade finance services to thousands of customers outside the UK and Ireland and will instead refer them to French bank BNP Paribas.
The decision is part of the plan it announced in February to shrink its investment bank and international operations and focus on lending to UK households and businesses.
"As part of our strategy to make RBS a simpler, stronger and more sustainable bank, RBS Transaction Services will focus on its home market capabilities in the UK and the Republic of Ireland," Marc Townsend, head of RBS's Global Transaction Services, said.
RBS, 78 percent-owned by the government, said it will continue to offer transaction services to both small and large businesses in the UK as well as multinational businesses from western Europe, the US, and the Asia Pacific region,which have significant links to the UK and Ireland. It will also provide transaction services to global financial institutions.
The bank said there would be a streamlined process to make the transition as smooth as possible for customers moving their transaction banking to Paribas.
Mr Townsend added: "We are confident that it has the people, country coverage, strong global product capability and infrastructure in transaction services to be an attractive alternative for our affected customers."
Outgoing chairman Sir Philip Hampton told last month's annual meeting that when he arrived in 2009, RBS had been in 53 countries with almost 200,000 employees and was "offering products and services where it simply didn't have the scale to compete". It had slashed £900billion of assets from the balance sheet, and was now focusing on 14 countries.
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