Fortis executives held liable for mis-information of shareholders in ABN-AMRO deal

[Hazir]

A judge in Utrecht has ruled that Jean Paul Vortorn and Gilbert Mittler, previously CEO and CFO at Fortis are guilty of misleading shareholders about the facts of the takeover of ABNAMRO by a Consortium of Fortis, RBS and Banco Santander. A group of Dutch shareholders were invoking a little used article in Dutch law that can attribute personal liability of an executive of a defunct company. Now that the court has ruled in favor of those shareholders a case can be brought to claim damages that Votron and Mittler will have to pay to those shareholders.

[Dreadnaught]

I'm having trouble finding a link to what they allegedly said that was false...

[Hazir]

I'm having trouble finding a link to what they allegedly said that was false...

They told the purchase could be done without diluting the current shareholders holdings. That was not exactly true. I remember that I was a bit surprised at the time about this deal. I couldn't imagine how they could possibly cough up the €90 bn or so that they bid for ABN-AMRO. As it turned out, they couldn't. The ABN-AMRO deal brought down Fortis and RBS. Santander did relatively good out of the deal. When Fortis toppled, Fortis Netherlands (including 1/3 of the old ABN-AMRO) was nationalised (forcibly bought for IIRC €24bn). The shareholders were left with Fortis shares worth a fraction of their original value.