A consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland said on Friday it expects to issue offer documents in relation to its 71 billion euros ($95 billion) take-over bid for ABN Amro by mid-July.
RBS and its partners - Spain's Santander and Belgian-Dutch Fortis - are seeking to overturn an agreed all-share take-over of ABN by Britain's Barclays, worth about 64 billion euros at current prices. "The banks remain convinced that their proposed offer represents superior value for ABN Amro shareholders and significant benefits for customers and employees," the consortium said in Friday's statement.
A take-over of ABN would be the biggest bank take-over. The consortium said extraordinary general meetings of their shareholders to vote on the potential deal would be held by the first half of August. But the key issue for all the parties is a ruling by the Dutch Supreme Court expected by mid-July over the suspended sale of Chicago-based bank LaSalle, which ABN agreed to sell to Bank of America (BofA) in April in a side deal to the Barclays take-over.
Barclays' offer for ABN is conditional on LaSalle being sold, while the RBS consortium's offer is conditional on LaSalle remaining part of ABN. An indication on whether the Dutch court will allow the sale to BofA to go through or allow ABN shareholders to block it is expected in the next week, when the advocate general provides an opinion to the Supreme Court.
US-based hedge fund Atticus Capital, a Barclays investor, this week repeated its call for the UK bank to scrap its take-over, and Standard Life, which owns 1.8 percent of Barclays and 3 percent of RBS, said the consortium was better positioned to win ABN as it could justify paying a higher price.
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