Dutch bank ABN Amro has today said that it expects to meet its 2007 earnings target, despite the current turmoil on the world's financial markets and a disappointing performance by its Italian arm.
The statement comes ahead of a special meeting of ABN shareholders on Thursday, when the bank's investors will discuss two competing takeover bids for the business.
ABN stressed today that it had a very limited exposure to the troubled US sub-prime mortgage market and said that its overall liquidity position remained strong.
"Based on the results as per August year-to-date, we are on track to deliver an earnings per share (EPS) of approximately €2.30 (£1.59) on an adjusted basis, notwithstanding the impact of the current turmoil in financial markets on our global markets results and [the] continued disappointing performance of Antonveneta," ABN said.
Meanwhile in a statement yesterday the bank's board said that it had decided to refrain from recommending either of the two takeover offers for the company to its shareholders.
A consortium including the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has made a €71 billion (£49 billion) offer for ABN, while a rival all-share offer – currently worth around €11 billion (£7.6 billion) less - has been put forward by Barclays.
Yesterday ABN stressed that while the Barclays offer supported the bank's objective of keeping itself intact, the consortium bid was "clearly superior" financially.
ABN chairman Rijkman Groenink subsequently told a Dutch TV station that the Barclays bid was unlikely to succeed given the current market turmoil.
Barclays' share price has been hit by the ongoing turbulence on the financial markets, 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 all-share bid for ABN has dropped.
Digg 
Delicious 
Reddit 
StumbleUpon 
Google 
Technorati 
Netvouz