Company Overview
Highlights
Divided between the Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis and Banco Santander in 2007 for €71 billion, the largest deal in European history.
Operated nearly 3,600 branches in 60 countries.
Truly global reach—ABN AMRO was listed on several exchanges, including the Amsterdam, London, and New York Stock Exchanges.
In 2007, ABN AMRO Holding was divided between Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis, and Banco Santander, which bought the leading bank in the Netherlands for €71 billion, the largest deal in European history. The three new owners are splitting up the bank's international divisions. Banco Santander has laid claim to ABN AMRO's Brazilian and Italian operations, Fortis gets the Dutch consumer banking arm and the asset management and private banking operations, and RBS takes the North American and Asian banking and investment banking units. As part of the sale, the bank sold its LaSalle subsidiary to Bank of America and is selling Banca Antonveneta to Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena. ABN AMRO operates some 4,000 offices in 50 countries.
ABN AMRO traces its roots to 1824, when King William I of The Netherlands issued a Royal Decree to establish Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (Netherlands Trading Society) in Amsterdam, with outreach to China, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). The company survived World War II and a cascading series of mergers in the 1960s. Today, ABN AMRO has a presence through its thousands of offices in scores of nations and territories around the globe. The bank has three business units. Consumer and Commercial Clients serves consumer and small to medium-sized business clients in the Netherlands, Brazil, and the Midwestern United States, where it runs Standard Federal Bank and LaSalle Bank. Wholesale Clients offers corporate and investment banking services, with an emphasis on Europe. Private Clients and Asset Management offers private banking and asset management services to wealthy individuals, financial intermediaries, and institutional clients. ABN AMRO sold off its U.S.-based professional brokerage business, a part of its Wholesale Clients unit, to Merrill Lynch. In fact, 2006 was a seller’s market for ABN: It agreed to let go of its futures and commodities trading to UBS, sell its Taiwanese domestic asset business to ING Groep and opted to give up Bouwfonds, its property management division, to Rabobank and SNS Reaal Groep NV. Like many banks, ABN plans to move more operations to India, trim jobs, and expand into China.