Malaysian bank uses RBS assets to grow in Asia
CIMB believes this will help it become a player in the Asian century, says chief Nazir Razak
CIMB Group is keen to use its recent acquisition of some Asian assets from Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to help it expand rapidly outside its home market, focusing on Southeast Asia and China.
Nazir Razak, chief executive of CIMB, the second-largest bank in Malaysia, told the in an exclusive interview he wanted to make better use of those RBS assets than Nomura did when it acquired Lehman Brothers' assets in Asia and Europe during the 2008 global financial crisis.
Nazir, who became chief executive of the group in 1999, said the Nomura-Lehman deal "didn't quite succeed" owing partly to difficulties with integration, which he tried to avoid in the CIMB-RBS deal.
Keeping local management and making different corporate cultures work together are two things that are key to making an acquisition succeed, he said.
"Today, [clients are] our investment banking customers; tomorrow, they may be CIMB's branch customers for transaction banking services," Nazir said during a business trip to meet some of the bank's most important clients in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and the mainland.
CIMB agreed to pay US$140 million in April for some Asian assets of loss-making RBS, which was bailed out by the British government during the financial crisis. These include its cash equities businesses in Australia, Hong Kong and the mainland, India and Taiwan, as well as two equities distribution divisions in New York and London.
