Barclays to buy ABN Amro in world's biggest banking merger

Apr 23, 2007, 6:15 GMT

The Hague - British bank Barclays Plc and the Netherlands' ABN Amro said Monday that have agreed to merge in a deal worth 91 billion dollars, the largest banking acquisition the world has ever seen.

London-based Barclays plans to acquire Amsterdam-based ABN Amro in a stock deal that values ABN Amro's shares at 36.25 euros (49.26 dollars) per share, 33 per cent more than the price on the last trading day before the talks were announced a month ago and slightly less than Friday's closing price of 36.29 euros.

As part of the sale, Bank of America Corp would acquire ABN Amro's Chicago-based LaSalle Bank Corp for about 21 billion dollars.

ABN Amro's stockholders would receive 3.225 Barclays shares for each of their stocks in an agreement that would see Barclays shareholders owning 52 per cent of the combined bank, to be called Barclays Plc, and ABN Amro stockholders owning 48 per cent, the companies said in a statement.

The deal by Britain's third-largest bank would create Europe's second-largest bank in market value, behind HSBC Holdings Plc. It would have nearly 230,000 employees and 8,200 branches from India to South America.

The announcement came after a consortium made up of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Spain's Santander Central Hispano SA and the Dutch-Belgian financial house Fortis also said it was interested in ABN Amro.