Business

The battle over ABN AMRO
by Claudia Sonea

The Dutch bank ABN AMRO, one of the largest banks in Europe, with operations all over the world, is the newest prey for which both Barclays, the third largest bank in the United Kingdom based on assets, and the Royal Bank of Scotland, owned subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc. Until recently there was the problem that the deal between Barclays and ABN would pose competition risks, but European Commission gave green light to the merge because the Dutch bank had only marginal activities on the UK's market. This agreement between the two banks was announced on 23 April 2007 and as part of it US division and Chicago-based LaSalle Bank will be sold to Bank of America for €16 billion. Three other banks, Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis and Banco Santander, acting as a consortium contacted ABN AMRO on 13 April 2007 to propose a deal. The biding war made the RBS-led group to bid €72 Billion if LaSalle Bank will not be sold to Bank of America. ABN originally supported the Barclays offer, but withdrew its backing last month. However, RBS' offer has still unsolved questions; mostly about the intention to carve it into pieces. The fact that the other bank that bids will keep Dutch lender mostly intact makes the tie to be high. The question is if the difference of 9.8 percent between the two offers will make the difference necessary to win the bidding. Don't click away, more interesting news are about to come.

related story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6932647.stm

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.

posted by Blog TechSource @ 11:59 AM