Royal Bank of Scotland has ruled out any sale of its stake in Bank of China, in spite of its capital difficulties, and intends to press ahead with a two-pronged Chinese expansion strategy, according to one of the UK bank’s senior executives.

The value of RBS’s 5 per cent stake in BoC has trebled to £2.4bn ($4.7bn) since it made the investment in 2005, fuelling speculation that RBS could sell out and focus on expanding the Chinese operations of ABN Amro, the Dutch lender it acquired last year as part of a break-up bid.