HSBC has received offer from Safra Group to buy the Monaco private bank the Safra family once owned, Bloomberg reported citing three unidentified sources.

According to the article, the Monaco unit may be valued at US$600 million to US$700 million.

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HSBC has been under regulator’s lens over its operations in low-tax jurisdictions, with UK authorities saying last year that they were acting on information about accounts at the bank’s Geneva office.

HSBC acquired the private-bank businesses in 1999 through its US$9.85 billion acquisition of Edmond J. Safra’s Republic New York Corp. and Safra Republic Holdings.

The sources also told Bloomberg that HSBC also made informal approaches to potential buyers for parts of its Swiss private bank over the past month. However, no final decision has been made on either unit.

HSBC, which is closing or selling 52 businesses to revive earnings, said in May that it may be selling the Monaco private banking unit as part of the group’s continuing strategic five-filter review and the lender has received "unsolicited expressions of interest" for the same.

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HSBC has already sold a small accounts portfolio in Monaco to Société Générale subsidiary Crédit du Nord in May 2012, with assets under management of about US$140 million.

With less than a year left in the first phase of its restructuring plan, HSBC is targeting an additional US$2 billion to $3 billion in cost savings between 2014 and 2016, as the lender axes jobs and sells noncore businesses.

HSBC has already achieved US$4 billion of annualised sustainable cost savings under a strategic three-year restructuring plan launched in May 2011.