July 21, 2007	Saturday	Rajab 05, 1428

LONDON, July 20: A European banking consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland will present a formal takeover offer for Dutch bank ABN Amro on Monday, the chairman of ABN said on Friday.

Earlier this week the three-bank consortium ramped up the cash part of its 71.1-billion-euro proposal for ABN Amro to 93 per cent in an attempt to beat a rival offer from British bank Barclays.

RBS, Banco Santander of Spain and Belgian-Dutch group Fortis are hoping to persuade ABN Amro to ditch a bid by Britain’s Barclays that is worth 67 billion euros.

“The offer of the consortium will be launched on Monday, July 23,” ABN chairman Rijkman Groenink said in a statement.

He said the offer does not include an offer to buy the US bank LaSalle, ABN’s US subsidiary which has already agreed to sell to the Bank of America under a deal with Barclays.

“We have already said that we have until July 23 to publish the documents of our offer,” a spokesman for RBS said.

Monday is the deadline set by the Dutch market regulators to the interested parties to publish their formal offers.—AFP