RBC sold off the old USA bank they had (RBC Bank, formerly RBC Centura), sort of. The USA retail side - bank and its branches and credit card operations was sold off to another USA bank company, PNC Bank and rebranded under the PNC banner. ( see
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/glob...tail-banking-with-sale-to-pnc/article4260245/ and
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/20/us-rbc-pnc-idUSTRE75I2V520110620 )
HOWEVER, they kept the RBC cross-border accounts (not sure what else was kept) and put them into a new unit, RBC Bank (USA), a wholly owned subsidiary of RBC Canada. For those of us who were customers before and after, there was a transition period where our accounts were changed over (new routing #; they issued new cheques, etc).
While I am loathe to refer to wikipedia, there is a wiki article that explains the transition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBC_Bank
SW