ABN AMRO

ABN AMRO Bank N.V. is the third-largest Dutch bank, with headquarters in Amsterdam. It was initially formed in 1991 by merger of the two prior Dutch banks that form its name, Algemene Bank Nederland (ABN) and Amsterdamsche en Rotterdamsche Bank (AMRO Bank).

Following aggressive international expansion, ABN AMRO was acquired and broken up in 2007–2008 by a consortium of European banks, including Fortis which intended to take over its formed operations in the Benelux region. Fortis came under stress in the autumn of 2008, and was in turn broken up into separate national entities; the Dutch operations, namely Fortis Bank Nederland and the former ABN AMRO activities that Fortis had planned to absorb, were nationalized, restructured, and renamed ABN AMRO in mid-2010. On 20 November 2015, the Dutch government publicly re-listed the company through an IPO and sold 20 percent of the shares to the public.

ABN AMRO has been designated as a Significant Institution since the entry into force of European Banking Supervision in late 2014, and as a consequence is directly supervised by the European Central Bank.

In 1824, King William I established the Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (NHM) a trading company to revive trade and financing of the Dutch East Indies and it would become one of the primary ancestors of ABN AMRO. The NHM merged with the Twentsche Bank in 1964, to form Algemene Bank Nederland (ABN). Also in 1964, the Amsterdamsche Bank, established in 1871, merged with the Rotterdamsche Bank, established in 1873 (as part of a merger that included Determeijer Weslingh & Zn. from 1765), to form Amsterdamsche en Rotterdamsche Bank, known as AMRO Bank.

On 22 September 1991, ABN and AMRO merged to form ABN AMRO. In 1993, two of its investment banking subsidiaries ― Bank Mees & Hope and Pierson, Heldring & Pierson ― merged in turn to form MeesPierson.

The two merged banks brought to ABN AMRO a large network of overseas companies and branches. From NHM, ABN owned a significant branch network in Asia and the Middle East, including the Saudi Hollandi Bank owned by the NHM Jeddah branch. Another, the Hollandsche Bank-Unie (HBU), which grew from the merger of the Hollandsche Bank voor de Middellandsche Zee (HBMZ) and the Hollandsche Zuid-Amerika Bank in 1933, gave ABN AMRO an extensive network of branches in South and Central America. In 1979, ABN had expanded into North America with the acquisition of Chicago-based LaSalle National Bank.

After the 1991 merger, ABN AMRO continued to grow through a number of further acquisitions, including the 1996-purchase of suburban Detroit based Standard Federal Bank followed five-years later by the acquisition of its Detroit-based competitor Michigan National Bank which was rebranded as Standard Federal. In 2005, Standard Federal became LaSalle Bank Midwest to unite ABN AMRO's two banking networks in the U.S. In 1995, ABN AMRO purchased The Chicago Corporation, an American securities and commodities trading and clearing corporation.

Other major acquisitions included the Brazilian bank Banco Real in 1998, and the Italian bank Antonveneta in 2006. It was also involved in the controversial acquisition of the Dutch local government mortgage and building development organisation, the Bouwfonds in 2000. ABN AMRO sold the Bouwfonds as a going concern in 2006.