STAMFORD, June 16, 2009 - RBS Sempra Commodities, the commodities trading joint venture between RBS and Sempra Energy, today announced two senior appointments.  Satu Parikh has been appointed as Managing Director and President.  Parikh will be based in Stamford, Connecticut and will report to Kaushik Amin, CEO of RBS Sempra Commodities, who joined the firm in May 2009.  In this role, Parikh will work closely with Amin and other senior management to oversee various business lines of the joint venture.

        Additionally, RBS Sempra Commodities announced Maximilian I. Coreth has been named as Managing Director and Head of Power, North America. He will be based in Stamford and will report to Amin.

        “We are delighted to have two world class professionals like Satu and Max join our leadership team,” said Amin.  “We anticipate significant growth in our commodities business over the next few years through both organic growth as well as the capture of synergies between our existing platform and the strengths of RBS. Satu and Max will strengthen our senior management team and enhance our risk management and product capabilities for clients.”

        Parikh joins RBS after 12 years at Lehman Brothers, where he was most recently the Global Head of Commodities from 2006 to 2008.  He worked for the firm in New York and Tokyo and previously held several senior level positions at the firm including heading Rates, Foreign Exchange and Commodities trading for the Asian region. While at Lehman, Parikh was a member of the Fixed Income Management Committee and served on the CFTC’s Energy Markets Advisory Committee. He holds a B.S. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

        Coreth was most recently Head of North American Gas and Power Trading at Lehman Brothers.  From 2001 to 2008, he was a part of the management team for Morgan Stanley’s power business in New York.  Previously he worked for Pacificorp for seven years. He holds a B.A. in Mathematics from Reed College.
 
        RBS Sempra Commodities combines financial risk management techniques with physical expertise to provide innovative solutions for customers in natural gas, natural gas liquids, power, petroleum and petroleum products, coal, emissions, ethanol and base metals.

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        The Royal Bank of Scotland Group
        The RBS group is a large international banking and financial services company. Headquartered in Edinburgh, the Group operates in the United Kingdom, Europe, the Americas and Asia, serving more than 40 million customers. The Group provides a wide range of products and services to personal, commercial and large corporate and institutional customers through its two principal subsidiaries, The Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest, as well as through a number of other well known brands including, Citizens, Ulster Bank, Coutts, Direct Line and Churchill.

        Sempra Energy
        Sempra Energy, based in San Diego, Calif., is a Fortune 500 energy services holding company with 2008 revenues of nearly $11 billion. With 13,600 employees, the Sempra Energy companies develop energy infrastructure, operate utilities, and provide related products and services to about 29 million consumers worldwide.