LONDON (Thomson Financial) - The Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc expects the synergy gains from the acquisition of Dutch rival ABN Amro to exceed targets, chairman Tom McKillop said.

RBS led a consortium that bought ABN Amro (nyse: ABN - news - people ) for 72 billion euros last year. Spain’s Banco Santander and Belgo-Dutch bank Fortis (other-otc: FORSY.PK - news - people ) are members of the consortium.

McKillop told shareholders at RBS’s AGM that the bank over the past six months has confirmed the financial benefits it will derive from combining the businesses of RBS and ABN Amro.

‘Indeed, we now expect these benefits to be even greater than those we originally anticipated. By 2010, when we have completed the integration process, we expect to achieve synergies totaling almost 2.3 billion euros a year,’ he said.

April 20 (Bloomberg) — Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc will announce writedowns of between 5 billion pounds ($10 billion) and 7 billion pounds this week as it prepares a share sale, the Sunday Times reported, without saying where it got the information.

The U.K.’s second-biggest lender, whose board meets today, also plans to announce a stock offering of between 10 billion and 12 billion pounds, and is looking to raise as much as 5 billion pounds by the end of this financial year through asset disposals, the newspaper said.

Led by Chief Executive Officer Fred Goodwin, Edinburgh- based Royal Bank is the most indebted of the biggest U.K. banks after paying about 72 billion euros with Banco Santander SA and Fortis for ABN Amro Holding NV, mostly in cash.

AMSTERDAM, Apr. 17, 2008 (Thomson Financial delivered by Newstex) — Dutch shareholders association VEB called on Thursday for a takeover code to be introduced in the Netherlands after an Amsterdam commercial court rejected its request for an inquiry into ABN Amro (NYSE:ABN) Holding NV’s management.

The VEB said takeover situations should be made more transparent, more predictable and fairer, adding it will unveil concrete proposals for a takeover code next week.

The association was responding after the Enterprise Chamber of the Amsterdam Court of Appeals rejected on Thursday a request from the VEB and Dutch unions to conduct an investigation into ABN Amro’s management and its actions last year in the takeover battle for the Dutch bank.

In a separate statement after the Amsterdam court’s ruling, trade union FNV Bondgenoten said it will consider lodging an appeal against the ruling.

April 9 (Bloomberg) — Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, the U.K.’s second-biggest lender, is eliminating about 200 jobs at its corporate-banking unit because of the credit crisis, according to two people with knowledge of the plan.

The cuts will affect the leveraged-loan, property-finance and commercial mortgage-backed securities businesses amid a slowdown in lending and trading, said the people, who declined to be identified because the changes are confidential.

RBS, which bought ABN Amro Holding NV with partners Banco Santander SA and Fortis for about 72 billion euros ($113 billion) last year, is selling assets to shore up capital and cushion writedowns on credit-related assets. U.K. banks including Edinburgh-based RBS and Barclays Plc are scaling back lending amid higher funding costs since the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market.

“Most global financial institutions are reviewing their businesses in light of the current market conditions,” said Steven Blaney, a London-based spokesman for RBS. “Unfortunately it does mean there will be some head count reduction in some areas.”

PORTO, Portugal, April 9 (Reuters) - Banco Santander Chairman Emilio Botin said on Wednesday Spain’s biggest bank did not need acquisitions to keep growing and repeated his earnings per share growth target of over 15 percent a year.

We are growing very well,” Botin told reporters at the University of Porto. “Therefore, we do not need acquisitions or other operations.”

In February, Botin said Santander had no acquisition plans but would be open to any great deals if they came up on the market. Last month he said he had been approached about deals but would sit things out until the credit crunch eased.

Royal Bank of Scotland is set to announce the third tier of job cuts in relation to its takeover of the Dutch bank ABN Amro in the next two weeks. The third phase will affect rank and file bankers after most management positions were settled in previous announcements.

One of the areas of the combined bank that is set to come under pressure is the leveraged debt division. The market for leveraged loans, high-yield bonds and highly geared property transactions has all but ground to a halt since the onset of the credit crisis last year, forcing banks to collectively write down billions of pounds worth of deals. Both banks had active departments in the market before it dived last summer, leaving them with exposure to transactions it could not sell. As a result, management at RBS and ABN Amro, and other banks, have been more selective in the deals they are willing to underwrite.

It is understood that the combined bank plans to cut leveraged finance jobs and will eventually have fewer people than either bank employed separately. Spokespeople for both banks declined to say whether leveraged debt jobs would be cut.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, Apr 03, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) — Today Fortis and ABN AMRO announce the first step in the sale of parts of the commercial banking activities of ABN AMRO Business Unit Netherlands (BU NL). This consists of Hollandsche Bank Unie N.V., two corporate clients units and 13 commercial advisory branches. In addition, the Dutch factoring company IFN Finance B.V. will be sold. All these businesses are currently part of ABN AMRO in the Netherlands.

Fortis, the Belgian-Dutch bank assurance group - part of the consortium that successfully bid for ABN Amro last year - expects integration of the parts of its Dutch rival that it acquired to take until the end of 2010.

Chief executive Jean-Paul Votron says splitting up ABN Amro is likely to take about two years. It confirmed the deal’s financial assumptions and growth targets, with synergies of €1.3bn (£1.04bn).

Meera Sanyal, country executive, ABN Amro Bank, said it’s interesting times to take over the reins, especially with ABN Amro’s integration with Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) underway.

Sanyal, who took over in December 2007, spends most of her time travelling to the bank branches across the country and interacting with employees.

“It’s easy to send an e-mail to all employees and make important announcements, but I prefer a face-to-face interaction, which brings a sense of confidence, particularly at a time when integration of the two entities is underway,” she said. Sanyal spoke to Anita Bhoir about the bank’s future plans and more. Excerpts:

AMSTERDAM, Mar. 11, 2008 (Thomson Financial delivered by Newstex) — The name ABN Amro (NYSE:ABN) will not immediately disappear after the merger of the asset management activities of Fortis and ABN Amro, newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad reported, citing head of Fortis Investments, Richard Wohanka.