Another twist in the ABN Amro takeover. And this time it’s RBS et al on the back foot - or at least in something of a corner.
The Dutch legal system has flung open the fight to buy the bank with the opinion from attorney-general to the Dutch Supreme Court, Vino Timmerman, that the sale of LaSalle Bank to Bank of America, cooked up as part of the merger between ABN and Barclays, did not require shareholder approval.
The advisory opinion, in which the attorney general recommends that the Supreme Court overturn an earlier decision by the Enterprise Chamber, is on the face of it a blow to the consortium of RBS, Fortis and Santander. They have mounted a €71bn break-up bid prefaced on the entirety of ABN being for sale. The Supreme Court need not follow Mr Timmerman’s advice, but has generally chosen to take his lead in about three of four cases.
Last word from the RBS camp was that talks with Bank of America on LaSalle were not on-going, nor were they likely to be resumed in the immediate future - and there was no advance on that on Tuesday morning.
But behind the scenes, there have been suggestions from the group that actually, contrary to popular belief and so on, they do not really need LaSalle.
No, no - despite the general knashing of teeth over the past three months, they could press ahead regardless and officially launch an offer for ABN excluding LaSalle, possibly as soon as next month, and thus take on Barclays head to head.
