KEY POINTS:
AMSTERDAM - A consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland has launched a ¬71.1 billion ($131 billion) bid for Dutch group ABN Amro, trumping Britain's Barclays in a battle for the world's biggest bank takeover.
In a long-awaited move, RBS and partners Fortis and Santander said yesterday they had raised the cash element of their offer from an original proposal but the bid was conditional on being able to unpick ABN's sale of its US arm, LaSalle Bank.
The offer was pitched at ¬38.40 an ABN share - ¬30.40 in cash plus 0.844 new shares in RBS.
The Barclays offer of 3.225 of its shares for every ABN share was worth about ¬64.4 billion yesterday, or just under ¬35 a share.
"This [RBS] deal offers better value for ABN shareholders, and we anticipate the consortium winning control," said Alex Potter, an analyst at Collins Stewart in London.
But ABN's shares dipped 0.8 per cent to ¬35.81, as the RBS offer was similar to that indicated a month ago and as the consortium failed to resolve the dispute over LaSalle Bank.
The consortium said it would prefer to agree a takeover with ABN's management but indicated it would go direct to shareholders if necessary. It said it expected its offer to be put alongside the Barclays offer in any takeover vote put to ABN's investors.
The RBS consortium said its offer would be pulled if it was unable to buy LaSalle, which ABN agreed in March to sell to Bank of America for US$21 billion ($29 billion) at the same time as it agreed to be taken over by Barclays. A Dutch Supreme Court is likely to rule on the deal by mid-July.
- REUTERS
