Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Ross McEwan has outlined the company’s fast-moving plans to shrink its global investment banking operations as it moves to reduce the number of countries the division operates in to 13 or 14 from 37 when he took the job.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television, McEwan said: “The work in the corporate and institutional bank primarily will be finished by the end of this year.”

McEwan ruled out a full disposal of the RBS investment bank division, Bloomberg reported.

“Why would we give up great strategic positions where we are some of the biggest players of these market places, where we can make money? We’ll show that over the next three to four years.”

McEwan said the RBS investment bank has strategic strengths in rates, foreign exchange, and credit including debt capital markets, but “the rest, we have moved away from.”

See the full Bloomberg interview here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-14/rbs-investment-bank-to-return-to-profit-after-overhaul-ceo-says