Dutch nationalized bank ABN Amro and the Dutch government announced the start of the ABN Amro Initial Public Offering (IPO) process, the so-called “Intention to float”, on Tuesday. On Tuesday ABN Amro and NLFI – the administrator of the state shareholdings in the financial sector – announced in a statement that the IPO will comprise of only a placement of existing shares certificates. ABN Amro said it would move the release of its quarterly earnings forward to November 9 from November 14.
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Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said it would now take exceptional circumstances to postpone the listing.
The flotation has been approved by parliament and both the Dutch and European central banks say they have no objections to the sale.
Seven years after ABN was nationalised at the height of the financial crisis, the Dutch government has fired the starting gun on a stock market return for the business, to start recouping its €22 billion (£15.8 billion) rescue.
ABN Amro, one of the Netherlands’ three largest banks, was nationalised in 2008.
The Belgian lender had joined a €72 billion takeover of ABN Amro with Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander in 2007.
The rump of ABN was nationalized on October 3, 2008, together with the Dutch operations of Fortis.
The bank’s vital statistics include a profit of 1.14 billion euros ($1.26 billion) in the first half of 2015, and a healthy core Tier 1 capital ratio of 14 percent.
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Zalm said ABN’s future global growth will be modest, coming mostly without acquisitions.
