ABN Amro's chief executive today said that a takeover bid for the Dutch bank made by British firm Barclays was too low to be recommended to shareholders.
Barclays' part-cash, part-share bid is currently worth around €59 billion (£41 billion), substantially less than a rival €70 billion (£49 billion) mostly-cash offer put forward by a consortium that includes the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
At an extraordinary meeting of shareholders to discuss the two bids today, ABN chief Rijkman Groenink told investors: "The offer of Barclays is too low.
"We cannot ask shareholders to pay the difference from the consortium's bid," he added, stopping short of recommending the RBS offer.
Mr Groenink had told a Dutch TV station on Sunday that the Barclays bid was unlikely to succeed given the current turmoil on the financial markets.
Barclays' share price has been hit by the ongoing turbulence, which has been caused by fears over the extent to which the world's banks are exposed to bad debts in the US housing sector.
As such the value of Barclay's mostly-share bid for ABN has fallen.
However ABN's board said in a statement at the weekend that it had decided to refrain from recommending either of the two takeover offers for the company to its shareholders.
The company stressed at the time that Barclays' offer supported ABN's objective of keeping itself intact, but acknowledged that the consortium bid was "clearly superior" financially.
On Monday RBS, Belgian-Dutch group Fortis and Spain's Santander received the welcome news that the Dutch finance minister had decided not to block a possible takeover of ABN by the consortium.
Whoever ultimately wins the battle to secure ABN will be part of the biggest financial takeover in history.
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