Monday, May 14, 2007

Regulators demands and gets clarity of RBS Consortium bidding for ABN AMRO

This monday morning the Dutch regulator for the securities market, AFM, published a press release to demand that all parties to the bidding for laSalle and ABN AMRO properly disclose all information to shareholders. And after further deliberation with the AFM, the RBS consortium disclosed its detailed information (here). And it announced that at the end of May, they would provide detailed information as to their bid. At the same time ABN AMRO clarified the further information available on their website.

Interestingly the intervention of AFM occurs in the week after our Minister of Finance clarified that it might want to better organise these kinds of public bidding procedures for companies. So AFM clearly wants to signal to the Minister that that is not necessary and that its role as a regulator that safeguards proper disclosure and bidding procedures stands unchallenged.