Branson and Flowers express interest as RBS considers keeping branches "What's changed since the original decision is the climate around state aid," he said in Tokyo at the IMF annual meeting at the weekend. If you look at the LTROs [the European Central Bank's emergency funding support for banks], in one way they are state aid. The Commission has been much, much more flexible. It used to be a pretty severe regime but they are making different judgments. Santander had been expected to pay £1.65bn for the 316 RBS branches but, following years of delays in attempting to carve out the business, a sale price of closer to £650m is now thought more likely. JC Flowers is also thought to be considering a potential bid. Christopher Flowers, the firm's founder, recently moved from the US to London to look at investment opportunities in Europe, and is keen to expand the firm's relatively small regional UK lender, One Savings Bank. The Sunday Telegraph reported that NBNK was also weighing up a move for the branches. NBNK lost out to the Co-operative Group in the battle for 632 branches put up for sale by Lloyds Banking Group, but its chief executive, Gary Hoffman, is understood to be keen to size up the RBS branches. RBS was expected to complete the transfer of the branches to Santander next year, but the Spanish bank pulled out last Friday, blaming technical problems that have beset the complex and long-delayed process to take control of the branches. Stephen Hester, chief executive of RBS, said it was "disappointing" that the sale to Santander had fallen through. The collapse followed a meeting of Santander UK's board on Thursday at which it was decided to withdraw from the deal due to alleged frustrations over the length of time the deal was taking. The delays are likely to mean that RBS will be forced to go to the European Commission to ask for an extension to the deadline for the transfer of the branches. RBS shares fell sharply at the start of trading on Monday.