A consortium led by private equity firm Corsair will pay £600 million ($960m) to be an anchor investor in 314 branches being sold by Royal Bank of Scotland.

RBS said yesterday the consortium had won an auction and would take a significant minority stake in the branch network, to be called Williams & Glyn's, when it lists on the stock market.

US-based Corsair, with private equity house Centerbridge and other investors including the Church of England's investment fund and RIT Capital Partners, had emerged as the front-runner for the deal in the past few weeks, seeing off competition from a Blackstone-led consortium and from W&G Investments, a group of investors.

RBS had agreed to sell the branches to Santander for about £1.65 billion, but that deal collapsed a year ago.-Reuters