BELGIUM/NETHERLANDS - Belgian-Dutch financial services group Fortis has won initial shareholder support today for its part of a three-bank bid to buy the beleaguered Dutch bank ABN Amro.

Over 90% of votes backed the bank's proposed purchase of ABN Amro at this morning's extraordinary general meeting of shareholders (EGM) in Brussels, where almost 35% of Fortis' share capital was represented.

The purchase would see Fortis triple its asset management business with the takeover of ABN Amro's €254bn global asset management arm.

Shareholders also voted in favour of the €13bn rights issue Fortis needs to finance the acquisition, which also would include ABN Amro's Dutch operations and its global private clients unit.

Fortis also expects shareholders at its second EGM in Utrecht, the Netherlands, this afternoon, to back the plans, a spokesman told IPE today.
 
In an overview of their proposed offer presented by Fortis and two other banks, Banco Santander and the Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis said it believes the deal would help develop the extension of its international wealth management operation and the expansion of its own €125bn asset management business to become a "top tier European asset manager with more than €300bn AUM [assets under management] globally".

Late last month, IPE reported Dutch pension funds were recalling their loaned securities in Fortis to prevent activist hedge funds benefiting from the implicit voting rights on Fortis' bid for ABN Amro.

The €211bn ABP civil service pension fund and the €86bn PGGM healthcare scheme had retrieved all of their securities on loan, as Fortis is on the full voting list of both funds.

On the same day as Fortis held its EGMs, the European Commission cleared British bank Barclays' rival €65bn bid for ABN Amro.

The Commission said it "concluded that the operation would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any substantial part of it".

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