ABN AMRO What is the deal?

The news are everywhere, ABN AMRO (the bank where I am doing my internship) is being sold.

But the question that remains in the air, is who is going to buy it? Not because no one would have appetite for it, but all the contrary, there are at least 4 banks that have showed how starving they are for our businesses.

Last monday, it was announced that ABN AMRO and Barclays had come to a selling agreement, creating a new bank that would be owned 52% by Barclays and 48% by ABN AMRO, creating the biggest/strongest bank in the world. The offer was valued in €67.000 m. Additionally ABN agreed to sell La Salle bank, their bank in the United States, to Bank of America for $21 billion.

Until then fine... everybody thought that this was a fact and the sell was going to be completed, but as it was also expected the consortium formed by RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland), Santander and Fortis made his call.

They offered €72.000 m, but conditioned to include La Salle bank in the package (this is the most atractive piece for RBS). With this offer speculation increased and the certainty of who will get the bid, from one side Barclays represented the best option (supported by the management board) for the continuity and sinergy that it can bring to ABN, also shareholders were adviced that this would be the best option for them.

From the other side, the "consortium" is not giving up, and has offered the 70% of the offer in cash (very atractive for shareholders), and had threaten ABN to put in hands of shareholders (instead of the ones of the management board) the decision to buy,

So here my question would be, would shareholders go the easy way accepting short-term benefits (cash), regardless it would mean the break up of a bank that has stand strong during almost two centuries, OR will they be interested in creating long term value taking advantages of the sinergies that can be created with Barclays, walking the sustainability talk for which has been awarded and recognized during the last years?

Only time will answer this question, while the answer come, we can be nothing but spectators, hoping that decision makers could be concerned about other stakeholders different to the ones that owns the stocks and who will be greatly impacted by this decision.