RBS under pressure to offload US business Jim O'Neil, chief executive of UK Financial Investments, told MPs yesterday that he had been in contact with RBS's management about offloading its US retail banking business, Citizens, and reviewing the future of the investment bank. Speaking at the Treasury Select Committee hearing, Robin Budenberg, chairman of UKFI, admitted plans to begin the disposal of the state's holdings in RBS and Lloyds Banking Group were behind schedule and no sales were expected in the near future. "If we're honest, we would have been expecting to make more disposals by now and that is clearly not something that is immediately on the horizon," said Mr Budenberg. His remarks follow comments last week by Sir Philip Hampton, chairman of RBS, who said it was "a reasonable aspiration" that the state could begin to sell its holding in the bank before the next general election in 2015. Ian Gordon, at Investec Securities, said the evidence from UKFI would make "grim listening for any investor in either RBS or Lloyds" and repeated his 'sell" recommendation on the shares of both banks. "It is not clear to us that either UKFI or the FSA's reported "engagement" in relation to Citizens is entirely consistent with optimising shareholder value. A fire-sale to plug any perceived capital shortfall may, in our view, prove short-sighted," said Mr Gordon.