Another one bites the dust - Fortis

After a turbulent week for Fortis, it finally ceased to exist last night. Following the nationalisation of the Dutch operations of the Bank on Friday, the Belgium Government's urgent hunt for a buyer for the remainder was concluded last night when BNP bought the remainder of Fortis in an all share deal.

This has ramifications in many areas of the banking and securities industries including

• the impact on the RBS consortium that bought ABN, of which Fortis was a part
• the new exchanges such as Chi-X which rely on Fortis to provide central counterparty services, albeit BNP will almost certainly wish to continue with this service
  

At the same time, there will inevitably be job losses as overlapping/duplicated functions between Fortis and BNP are phased out.

UPDATE
It appears that European Multilateral Clearing Facility, the Fortis Bank subsidiary that provides clearing services to Instinet Chi-X and Nasdaq OMX, has been passed to the Dutch government as part of the EUR16.8 billion rescue package.

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