THE Royal Bank of Scotland will boost head count in its wholesale banking business as well hire more senior bankers in China.

The British bank in December transferred its retail banking business in China's mainland to Singapore's DBS, which gives it access to 25,000 clients of RBS in Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen.

"We have the broadest business line among overseas banks," Lawrence Lam, RBS' China chairman, said in Shanghai yesterday. "What we want to do is to deepen roots of the platforms that we already have."

RBS yesterday announced the hiring of Frank Hamer, a veteran with 15 years' experiences in the industry, as head of global transactions services for China.

More senior banker positions are also in the pipeline as RBS continues to build up its business in China, Lam said.

RBS built its wholesale banking services in China through a locally-incorporated bank headquartered in Shanghai and a wholly- owned leasing company in Beijing.

It has a joint venture with Suzhou Trust and Galaxy Futures and has been approved to set up a securities joint venture, Hau Ying Securities.