RBS consortium in 200m sale of ABN private equity assets

Published on Monday 11 August 2008 21:36

ROYAL Bank of Scotland, along with Belgian-Dutch financial group Fortis and Spanish bank Santander, has sold a number of ABN Amro's private equity assets to a consortium led by Goldman Sachs.

The deal, reported to be worth about 200 million (156m), involves assets in companies in Scandinavia, Britain and the Netherlands.

The money from the sale is to be split equally among the three consortium partners which bought ABN in a 71 billion deal last year. It will potentially net RBS about 50m.

The seven-strong portfolio of companies was the remainder of ABN's private equity arm – now known as AAC Capital Partners – spun off from the Dutch bank last September.

ABN retained an interest in some of the portfolio, but it is understood to have always been considered surplus to requirements by the RBS-led consortium.

While some of ABN's assets were assigned to the individual banks after the takeover, others, such as the private equity portfolio, were retained jointly.

An RBS spokesman said last night: "Fortis, RBS and Santander have sold a large portion of ABN Amro's private equity interest to a consortium led by Goldman Sachs."

The Goldman Sachs consortium is also believed to include Dutch fund-of-funds Alpinvest and the Canadian retirement scheme Canada Pension Plan.

Other shared assets retained by the RBS consortium after the ABN takeover included a stake in Italian bank Unicredit, which it has sold off for an undisclosed sum. The banks have so far retained their shared ownership of a 40 per cent holding in Middle eastern bank Saudi Hollandi.

In a separate transaction, RBS is selling about $8bn (4bn) of leveraged loans to a consortium of US private equity firms including Apollo, GSO Capital – the debt investing arm of Blackstone – and TPG.

At the time of its 12bn rights issue, RBS outlined an intention to reduce its exposure to the credit markets.

It said last week that its exposure to leveraged finance had fallen from 14.5bn to 10.8bn in the six months to 30 June. The bank has since offloaded a further 1.3bn.

The sale comes despite a six-week decline in the prices in the secondary debt markets.