RBS team seal ABN Amro takeover

A Royal Bank of Scotland-led team today clinched victory in the six-month takeover battle for Dutch bank ABN Amro.

The RBS consortium, which also includes Belgo-Dutch bank Fortis and Spain’s Santander, now faces the the task of breaking up ABN after rival Barclays withdrew from the race on Friday.

The consortium saw its €71bn accepted by 86% of ABN’s shareholders.

The victory represents another success for RBS chief executive Fred Goodwin, who masterminded a takeover of NatWest in March 2000 - the biggest deal in UK banking history.

The RBS-led team added today that it would say whether its offer would be declared unconditional by the end of this week, following the closure of Fortis’s €13bn tomorrow night.

Barclays withdrew its bid – which had fallen in value to around £43bn (€62m) as the bank’s share price declined in the recent market turmoil – after it received just a fraction of the acceptances it needed.

Both banks needed 80% of shareholders to give their consent to the bids for their offers to succeed.

The news has been met with caution in the City, with analysts raising concerns over the price RBS has paid and potential problems with integrating ABN’s assets in the midst of unstable financial markets.

Other commentators have also suggested that the consortium faces a tough task in breaking up the bank – a process which is likely to shed up to 19,000 jobs - and questioned why RBS has continued with its bid after ABN sold its La Salle US banking operation to Bank of America.

RBS had been hoping to snap up the US operation to boost its presence on the other side of the Atlantic but was thwarted by the Bank of America deal.

Instead Royal Bank of Scotland will get the rest of ABN’s North American business, its European business, excluding Antonveneta, the bank’s Asian operations and its wholesale business, excluding Brazil.

Fortis is said to be set to grab the Netherlands operations, the global private clients business, excluding Latin America, and the global asset management business.

That leaves Santander with the majority of the Latin America divisions, Italian bank Antonveneta, and Dutch credit firms Interbank and DMC Consumer Finance.

The break-up will involve some 4,500 branches across 53 countries.

The RBS-led bid is expected to secure its final regulatory clearance from Dutch central bank DNB on Wednesday.