Although ABN Amro is an established international bank with a history of 183 years, its performance has been poor. In March 2007, the British TCI hedge fund, which owns ABN Amro 1% shares, took the lead in launching an attack, demanding that the management of ABN Amro sell or split the whole group to ensure that the interests of shareholders would not be harmed. This proposal was supported by most shareholders of ABN Amro. As soon as the news came out, ABN Amro immediately became the focus of global banking mergers and acquisitions. Many big banks have shown great interest, especially Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). Barclays Bank took the lead in proposing a merger and acquisition plan with a total value of 67 billion euros, and acquired ABN Amro by combining stock exchange and cash. Every ABN Amro ordinary share will be exchanged for 2. 13 ordinary shares of Barclays Bank, plus 13. 15 euros in cash, which is equivalent to 3.225 Barclays shares exchanged for 1 ABN Amro.
Soon after, RBS and its acquisition team made a more attractive acquisition plan, and its acquisition price reached 7 1 1 billion euros, of which the cash ratio was as high as 93%.
Finally, in June 2007, Royal Bank of Scotland won the acquisition. In fact, judging from the bids of both parties, this result is not unexpected. First of all, the purchase price of RBS is more than 4 billion euros higher than that of Barclays. Second, Royal Bank of Scotland has a much higher cash ratio. In the era of advocating "cash is king", Barclays' over-reliance on share swap obviously puts it at a disadvantage. At the same time, in this acquisition, Royal Bank of Scotland took over the Asian business of ABN Bank of America. This means that ABN Amro's 65,438+07 branches in China, with more than 65,438+0,000 employees, will all be taken over by RBS, and RBS's operational strength in China will be greatly improved.