ABN Amro deal continues

http://business.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1384782007

THE Royal Bank of Scotland consortium bidding 71 billion (£48bn) to take over ABN Amro is understood to have examined the implications the volatile debt market and equity market conditions might have on its bid - but has decided it does not threaten its offer, despite dramatic falls in banking shareprices.

It comes as City banking analysts said the odds still favoured the consortium’s bid not being derailed, although it was impossible to rule it out categorically.

A source close to Belgo-Dutch bank Fortis, RBS’s partner along with Banco Santander of Spain, told The Scotsman yesterday: “The current conditions have been taken into consideration, but they are not a concern at present.”

One banking analyst said: “You cannot categorically state there is no danger to the consortium bid, but I don’t think there is too much. Look at the size of the three banks combined, and that is a lot of financial firepower that lending banks will have confidence in.”

There’s been a lot in the news as a result of the subprime mortgage market failing and issues resulting in banks’ liquidity. We’ll see the stock market goes up and down, it’s part of the cost of doing business, going forward the shareholders need to decide which deal represents the best return on investment, at that point in time.

In the meantime, there was also this article:

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2007/08/rabobank_attracts_abn_amro_cli.php

Tens of thousands of ABN Amro customers have switched to Rabobank because of the ongoing takeover battle for ABN Amro, claims Rabobank.

Rabobank says some 500 people a day, on top of the normal traffic, are opening an account with one of its branch offices.

Between April to July, 40,000 people opened a Rabobank account, chairman Bert Heemskerk was quoted as saying in the Financieele Dagblad.

Check out this article, it’s talking about ABN Amro customers switching to Rabobank, these kind of things are always debatable, it does highlight the point however, that the sooner the transaction is completed, the better for the ABN customers, employees and shareholders.