THE HAGUE, 26/04/07 - Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander and Fortis have jointly made an indicative bid of 39 euros per share for ABN Amro Bank. This trumps Monday's 36.25 euros bid by Barclays Bank.

The price of 39 euros a share is including ABN Amro's 0.60 euro dividend. The three banks announced yesterday that they are offering about 70 percent of the bid in cash, and the other 30 percent in Royal Bank of Scotland shares.

The indicative bid values ABN Amro at 72 billion euros, compared with Barclays' bid of 67 billion. The UK bank's offer would be transacted wholly in its own shares.

The Royal Bank of Scotland-led consortium is conditional on ABN Amro dropping its sale of LaSalle Bank. On Monday, ABN Amro had announced it was selling this US bank to Bank of America for 21 billion dollars. If this agreement does not go through, ABN Amro has to pay a penalty of 200 million dollars.

Insiders suspect the consortium wants to split ABN Amro up into units. Royal Bank of Scotland first want to carry out a due diligence giving it the same information as Barclays.

It was already confirmed Tuesday evening that ABN Amro would consider a possible bid by the consortium. This emerged from information that the Dutch bank provided Monday to the US bourse supervisory body SEC.

Fortis, a Belgian-Dutch banking and insurance group, was unable to disclose the size of its share in the potential transaction yesterday. It is believed to be interested in the Dutch activities of ABN Amro. RBS wants to absorb LaSalle Bank and the investment banking activities. Santander, a Spanish bank, is thought to be eyeing the Italian and Brazilian activities.