Dutch Supreme Court Rules in Favor of BofA and ABN in Merger Case

A ruling from the Dutch Supreme Court Friday paves the way for ABN Amro to sell its American bank unit LaSalle Bank to Bank of America.  It also brings Barclays one step closer to winning the right to pull off the largest bank merger in history with ABN.

In late April, United Kingdom-based Barclays and Dutch bank ABN Amro announced that they had agreed on a merger worth around $90 billion. Terms of the deal included ABN selling LaSalle to BofA for $21 billion, with Barclays acquiring all other ABN holdings. Two weeks later, a Dutch judge blocked the LaSalle-Bank of America deal, ruling it first needed ABN shareholder approval. ABN appealed the case to the Dutch Supreme Court who ultimately agreed with ABN Friday. Both ABN and BofA announced today they planned to move forward with the deal.

The ruling throws another obstacle in the path of a rival bid from a European consortium made up of Royal Bank of Scotland, Spain’s Banco Santander Central Hispano SA, and Belgian-Dutch bank Fortis NV.  The group submitted a bid that was higher than Barclays’, but it required that LaSalle Bank be included in the merger.  The group may make another bid within the week that excludes LaSalle.