The Royal Bank of Scotland is excluding its India operations from the planned sale and purchase agreement of various Asia Pacific businesses to Malaysia's CIMB Group due to an unexpected legal issue.

"We see this as a temporary delay in our Indian bulid-up as we will now have to follow the same process as Korea, which was excluded from the RBS transaction from the outset, and proceed to establish our own operation by applying for a new licence or purchasing an entity with an existing licence," said Dato Sri Nazik Razak, group chief executive for CIMB Group. 

The transfer of operations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand was completed 27 April 2012, while the main part of the acquisition from Royal Bank of Scotland, covering businesses in China and Hong Kong and their London and New York-based staff was completed 30 June. The operations in Australia and Taiwan will be finalised by the fourth quarter of 2012.

CIMB's deal to acquire most of the Asia-Pacific cash equities and associated investment banking businesses of RBS was announced 2 April at an initial cost of £173.9 million ($270.9 million). Without the Indian part, the total acquisition cost will be down to around £160 million ($249 million).