Egypt telco mulls bid for RBS Pakistan units

Egypt's Orascom Telecom and Rojhan Capital investment have expressed an interest in buying Royal Bank of Scotland's Pakistani operations, the bank said today.

Orascom Telecom owns Pakistan's biggest mobile company, Pakistan Mobile Communications (Mobilink).

RBS is selling assets in Asia, including those in Pakistan, because of its capital constraints and its need to reduce the size of its balance sheet. RBS bought into Pakistan last August through its acquisition of Dutch ABN Amro. It operates 79 branches.

RBS Pakistan has a loan book of 68 billion rupees (£892million), deposits of 79billion rupees and assets of 108 billion rupees.

Shares in RBS's Pakistan unit, which has a market capitalisation of around 15billion rupees, were trading down 1% at 19.05rupees.