They are primarily interested in promoting their own platform.
Here's when they announced it last April.
http://www.r3cev.com/blog/2016/4/4/introducing-r3-corda-a-distributed-ledger-designed-for-financial-services
They released to mixed reviews in December.
http://www.coindesk.com/r3-corda-debut-mixed-response/
The point isn't just R3. There is a lot of competition out there. Lots of different platforms being released that are direct competition to Ethereum. It seems that I hear about a new one every few weeks. I'm not saying Ethereum is bad software; but, it is not unique and when you look at the history of these various companies not ground breaking.