Company filings revealed that W&G Investments Plc was set to raise funds for its planned bid of 316 outlets of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group. W&G Investments would be going public in London tomorrow. The filings showed that the firm intended to raise GBP 15 million pounds through a sale of its shares. The fundraising will be part of W&G's due diligence requirement for its bid of the RBS branches. W&G expected to bid GBP 1.1 billion in cash for the RBS units. It would also add GBP 400 million depending on the performance of the RBS outlets.
The share sale would be led by Andy Higginson, the former Finance Director of Tesco Plc. Schroders Plc, Threadneedle Asset Management and Landsowne Partners are some of the backers of W&G.
RBS received a GBP 45.5 billion taxpayer bailout. Thus, it needs to sell its branches by 2014 to meet the terms of European Union state-aid rules. For 2012, its branches generated operating profits of GBP 305 million. This accounted for 10% of the bank's annual total profits.
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