Santander withdraws to sink latest hopes for RBS spin-off sale as shipping unit goes belly-up

For a second time, the Spanish banking giant, which went back to RBS about acquiring the 300-plus branch network in August, has withdrawn its interest because a deal could not be reached on price, the Financial Times has reported.

Still 73 per cent state-owned RBS faces a deadline of 2017 to sell the branches to meet the conditions of its bailout.

It has declined to comment on the latest setback.

In August RBS abandoned its own plans to launch Williams & Glyn as a standalone bank, citing the complication and costs involved in cloning its banking platform to support the launch.

Last month RBS also reported a $2bn loss for the first six months of the year, which it blamed on past issues, including the mis-selling of payment protection insurance.

It also said that it spent £345 million attempting to form the Williams and Glyn unit.

Meanwhile, the Edinburgh-based lender appears to have suffered a further blow after it emerged that it is drawing a line under another long-running saga after announcing that it has begun winding down its global shipping finance business.

According to reports, shipping industry sources have revealed that RBS had been trying to sell its Greek shipping business, valued at around $3 billion (2.31 billion pounds), for over a year.

“In line with the bank’s strategy to create a simpler, stronger, and more sustainable bank, better aligned to the needs of our customers in the UK and Western Europe, we are commencing the wind down of our shipping business,” an RBS spokesperson said.

“We understand how difficult this will be for our staff and we will be offering support to those affected, including redeploying people in to other positions where we can.”

The bank made the decision to cease the effort to sell it off during a worsening downturn across the freight industry.

Banking and financial sources said in July that Credit Suisse and China Merchants had backed off from separate talks on a possible purchase of the unit, partly due to concerns over Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and a lack of interest in the business.