Royal Bank of Scotland Plc is set to unveil up to 20,000 job losses next week as part of tough cost-cutting targets, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.

Without citing a source, the newspaper said between 10,000 and 20,000 jobs out of a total workforce of about 215,000 could go.

It also said RBS was in talks with Treasury officials about the possibility of offering quasi-equity instruments worth billions of pounds as a fee under the government's planned insurance scheme designed to ring-fence potentially toxic assets.

Again without citing a source, the paper said talks were ongoing and the exact scale of the assets remained unclear.

The announcements are expected to coincide with RBS reporting its full-year results on February 26, the FT added.

Neither the Treasury nor RBS would comment on the report of jobs losses or the planned insurance scheme.

RBS is on course to reveal a loss of up to 28 billion pounds next week for 2008, the largest in British corporate history.

Its attempts to raise cash following its ill-fated purchase of ABN Amro has forced RBS to hire Morgan Stanley to explore the potential sale of its Asian banking units, sources earlier told Reuters.

The part-nationalized bank is likely to first explore options for its retail and commercial units, one source said on Friday, but it would be willing to consider an offer for the investment banking operations, if the price was right.

RBS acquired its Asian retail and commercial banking operations as a result of the ABN deal, which also enhanced significantly its investment banking presence in the region.

Both RBS and Morgan Stanley declined to comment on the hiring.

Separately, RBS said on Friday it will report early findings of its strategic review next week.

(Reporting by Avril Ormsby and Michael Flaherty; Editing by Andre Grenon)

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