Major international lender to exit U.S. mortgage business

After originally planning to shrink its U.S. business by two-thirds, the bank announced it is fully exiting the market.

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is exiting its U.S. mortgage trading business after originally planning to shrink it by two-thirds. Exiting mortgage backed-security, commercial real estate and commercial mortgage-bond sales and trading markets "is a necessary part of repositioning our U.S. business," an RBS spokesman said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

The bank announced in May it would eliminate hundreds of jobs over the course of two years to help reduce assets in the U.S. due to new legislation passed by the Federal Reserve in February.The regulation requires foreign banks, with $50 billion or more in U.S. assets, to set up an intermediate holding company subject to the same capital, risk management and liquidity standards as U.S. banks.

The company plans to retain its non-mortgage asset backed securities team.