CIMB Group Holdings Bhd (1023.KU) of Malaysia said Monday it will pay Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (RBS.LN) a gross amount of GBP88.4 million for its Asian equities business, boosting an ambition by the nation's second biggest lender by assets to create a pan-Asian bank.

CIMB is buying parts of RBS's cash equities and associated investment banking businesses in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan.

For RBS, the sale to CIMB would help keep a lid on global restructuring costs, a politically important issue for the bank, which is 83%-held by the U.K. government after being bailed out following the 2008 global financial crisis.

RBS said in January it would exit from its cash-equities, corporate-brokering, equity-capital-markets and mergers-and-acquisitions businesses as part of changes to its wholesale-banking operations.

"With this transaction we have now completed the sales process for various elements of the businesses we designated for exit in January," RBS Group Finance Director Bruce Van Saun said in a separate statement.

Kuala Lumpur-based CIMB will separately inject GBP85.5 million of new capital into the various operating entities that it is acquiring from RBS. In addition, RBS will pay CIMB GBP13.8 million which will be used to defray operational costs in the first year

In all, CIMB will have a new presence in Taiwan and Australia, as well as substantially enlarged operations in Hong Kong, India and China, CIMB Group said in a statement. The transaction's price is pegged at 0.98 times to net tangible assets, it added.

"This is an excellent opportunity to complete the build-up of our capabilities in Asia Pacific markets and to do it quicker and less expensive than if we grew organically," said CIMB Group Chief Executive Nazir Razak.

The move by CIMB follows that of other regional banks that have been seeking to buy assets and hire talent from their Western counterparts as they aim to compete on a regional and global scale.

Credit Agricole SA said recently it was in talks with China's Citic Securities Co. over the sale of the French bank's Hong Kong-based brokerage business CLSA. If completed, the sale could help the French lender meet Europe's tough new financial regulations and cope with the euro-zone debt crisis.

CIMB will apply for a new securities license in South Korea as RBS has decided not to sell its Korean entities, Nazir said. RBS needs the trading license in the country to support the operations it is keeping in Asia, such as debt capital markets and derivatives, people familiar with the matter said.

RBS's Chinese securities joint venture is also not part of the deal because of RBS's commitment to maintain it for several more years. Negotiations over RBS's 50% stake in its brokerage RBS Morgans, with headquarters in Australia, are continuing, Nazir said.

By Jason Ng, Dow Jones Newswires; +603-2026-1233; jason.ng@dowjones.com