11/03/2015

Citizens Financial Group Announces Completion of RBS Ownership Selldown

PROVIDENCE, R.I.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Citizens Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE: CFG) today announced the closing of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc’s (“RBS”) registered underwritten public offering of 110,461,782 shares of CFG’s common stock. In completing this transaction, RBS has fully exited its ownership stake in CFG’s common stock.

“We are very pleased to have achieved independence for Citizens over one year ahead of schedule,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bruce Van Saun. “The accelerated timeframe for RBS’s divestiture was made possible by the great work of Citizens colleagues, who rose to the challenge while continuing to provide excellent service to our customers. We thank RBS for their support and look forward to continuing with a commercial relationship that will be mutually beneficial for both banks and their customers. While we still have work to do to continue to improve our performance, this is an important day in the history of Citizens and a significant marker of the progress we are making toward our goal of becoming a top-performing regional bank.”

Goldman, Sachs & Co., BofA Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and J.P. Morgan acted as underwriters for the offering.

About Citizens Financial Group, Inc.

Citizens Financial Group, Inc. is one of the nation’s oldest and largest financial institutions, with $135.4 billion in assets as of September 30, 2015. Headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island, Citizens offers a broad range of retail and commercial banking products and services to individuals, small businesses, middle-market companies, large corporations and institutions. In Consumer Banking, Citizens helps its retail customers “bank better” with mobile and online banking, a 24/7 customer contact center and the convenience of approximately 3,200 ATMs and approximately 1,200 Citizens Bank branches in 11 states in the New England, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions. Citizens also provides mortgage lending, auto lending, student lending and commercial banking services in select markets nationwide. In Commercial Banking, Citizens offers corporate, institutional and not-for-profit clients a full range of wholesale banking products and services including lending and deposits, capital markets, treasury services, foreign exchange and interest hedging, leasing and asset finance, specialty finance and trade finance.

Citizens operates through its subsidiaries Citizens Bank, N.A., and Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania.

Cautionary Statement About Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statement that does not describe historical or current facts is a forward-looking statement. These statements often include the words “believes,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “estimates,” “intends,” “plans,” “goals,” “targets,” “initiatives,” “potentially,” “probably,” “projects,” “outlook” or similar expressions or future or conditional verbs such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “would,” and “could.” Forward-looking statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of management, and on information currently available to management. Our statements speak as of the date hereof, and we do not assume any obligation to update these statements or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those contained in such statements in light of new information or future events. We caution you, therefore, against relying on any of these forward-looking statements. They are neither statements of historical fact nor guarantees or assurances of future performance. More information about factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements can be found under “Risk Factors” in our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on March 3, 2015.

CFG-IR

Citizens Financial Group, Inc.
Media:
Jim Hughes, 781-751-5404
or
Investors:
Ellen A. Taylor, 203-900-6854

Source: Citizens Financial Group, Inc.