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FRANKFURT -(Dow Jones)- The European Commission late Monday said it granted the Dutch government a 24-hour extension on talks to divest of nationalized bank assets "in light of encouraging developments" in a potential sales process.
The Dutch government now expects to have news on the sale of the state-owned bank assets by Tuesday, Dutch Finance Minister Wouter Bos said separately at a conference in Luxembourg Monday night. The Dutch state is required to sell some bank assets from ABN Amro and Fortis Bank Netherlands to meet competition standards mandated by the European Commission. The country took over ABN Amro and Fortis Bank Netherlands in October 2008 to prevent their collapse. The European Commission has already granted the Dutch government several extensions to shed the bank assets amid repeatedly stalled deal talks.
The European Commission warned Monday it would only grant another extension in order to finalize a binding sale and acquisition.
Deutsche Bank AG (DB) is widely considered interested in buying the Dutch bank assets, given a previous deal with the Dutch government to buy some of its bank assets fell through at the beginning of October.
That deal was an attempt to renegotiate the terms of a preliminary agreement signed last year for Deutsche Bank to acquire EUR709 million in assets from Fortis as part of its acquisition of ABN Amro.
French bank BNP Paribas SA (BNP.FR) backed out of a deal to buy Fortis assets earlier this month, according to people familiar with the matter.
Company Web sites:
http://www.db.com
http://www.abnamro.com
- By William Launder; Dow Jones Newswires; +49 69 29 725 515; william.launder@dowjones.com
(Carolyn Henson in Brussels and Roman Kessler in Luxembourg contributed reporting.)