LONDON/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A third of the staff of the Singapore office of RBS Coutts, a private bank that is part of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS), have quit in a mass resignation, RBS said on Tuesday.
The resignations of 75 people came a few months after Hanspeter Brunner, former co-CEO of RBS Coutts, and Raj Sriram, head of its South Asia unit, decided to leave the wealth manager and will join Swiss private bank BSI, sources told Reuters.
"Some of the staff are joining BSI," said a person with knowledge of the hiring. "Not all the 75 who have left (RBS Coutts)."
A spokesman for RBS confirmed the resignations. BSI was not available for comment.
The hiring comes after Nicola Battalora, Singapore chief executive of BSI, told Reuters in an interview in May that BSI was looking to expand in Asia and hire bankers.
Lugano-based BSI is a unit of Italy's insurance group Generali
RBS was rescued by the British government last year and its bonus payments to staff have been under careful scrutiny.
The RBS spokesman said the resignations represented less than 15 percent of the regional headcount.
"Staff volatility in the private banking industry is not unusual, especially in Asia," the spokesman said.
He declined to comment on the reason for the resignations.
(Reporting by Christopher Johnson in London and Saeed Azhar in Singapore; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
