Royal Bank of Scotland, whose private banking entity in Singapore reported mass resignations by 70 employees recently, will continue to hire aggressively for its investment banking business in China, a top executive told China Daily during a recent interview.

John Hourican, chief executive of RBS' Global Banking and Markets operations, said the bank would try to attract and retain talent in China and stick to its stated goal of becoming a top-five banking entity in the country.

"Our proposition is that we will attract the best talent in our core markets and pay competitively so that they can generate returns that satisfy our shareholders' needs," the 39-year-old banker said during a recent trip to Beijing.

The Edinburgh-based bank recently announced a barrage of new hires in China in a bid to beef up its investment banking business. Among the key appointments, the bank named Raymond Yin, who joined RBS from JP Morgan where he was chief representative and head of general industrials for the China market, as the co-head of investment banking for China.

The move comes in the backdrop of a battle for banking talent in Asian countries, especially in the private and investment banking sectors. Citigroup recently appointed Rodney Tsang, a senior investment banker with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, as co-head of its China investment banking team.

RBS, which is now 70-percent owned by the British government, also reiterated its strong commitment to the Chinese market. During the bank's recent strategic review, it decided to adopt a go-forward strategy focusing on products in which it believed it had global, top-tier positions, such as advisory and trading services, Hourican said.

The bank, which took a heavy battering from the global financial crisis last year, is planning to focus on its strengths by exiting from non-core businesses globally, including the retail and SME businesses in Asian countries, he said.

In August, the bank inked a deal with Australia and New Zealand Banking Group to sell its retail and SME banking arm in the regions of Taiwan and Hong Kong, and in Singapore and Indonesia for 325 million pounds ($533 million).

Regarding the sale of its non-core assets in China, which generated less than 30 percent of the revenue for RBS overall from the country, the transaction has reached "the final stages of the negotiations", said John McCormick, RBS's Asia chairman, who was accompanying Hourican on his Beijing trip.

McCormick said the bank was keen on partnerships with local brokerages in China, which could help the bank build an all-round business platform in the country.

In addition to its main banking entity, the bank also operates a locally incorporated leasing company and has stakes in Galaxy Futures and Suzhou Trust.