Hester also told a conference organised by Bank of America Merrill Lynch that RBS was likely to raise its targeted core Tier 1 capital ratio due to the impact of strict new capital requirement rules from the Basel committee of banking supervisors and Britain's Independent Commission on Banking (ICB). RBS, which put up Hester's presentation on its website, also reiterated that it planned to exit a government asset protection scheme (APS) for its risky assets in 2012. Shares in RBS, which is 83 percent owned by the British state following a taxpayer-funded bailout during the credit crisis, were down 6.5 percent in early morning trade.