The end of the Benelux Bank.

Belgium and Luxembourg are looking for an investor, who can buy the remaining activities of the Bank Fortis , after the decision of Netherlands to nationalize the dutch part of the financial group.

The plan programmed the last week-end planned the resale of the participation of Fortis in the dutch bank ABN Amro (bought in 2007 for 24.4 Billions Euro) to ING, which finally decided to stop negotiations. That's why the Dutch government has decided to nationalize all the activities of Fortis in Holland ( notably the essential of the activities of ABN Amro ) for 16.8 billions Euro. This nationalization leads to a disassembly of the group.

Belgium has said that the only solution of the group is to sell itself to a private investor , or to nationalize it to protect all savers and to avoid the layoff of some of the 45.000 employers.

This “second saving plan” (the first one was the participation of the Benelux in the bank, decided in the middle of September but useless because of the panic of all the clients of the bank who withdraw a lot of money) is organized during the meeting of the “G4” in Paris (France, Germany, Italy and England) where these four members states tried to find a common position towards the financial crisis.

The Belgium Minister of Economy, Jeannot Krecke, has indicated that the French bank BNP Paribas could be a potential buyer . “BNP Paribas is a possibility among others” said Krecke.

Fortis has been the first bank in Euro zone to fall because of the subprimes crisis. She bought ABN Amro last year for 24.4 billions Euro just before the beginning of the crisis, which leads to a crisis of credits, which make the possibility to borrow money more difficult to finance the operation.

The project of disassembly of this transborder group, just after the plan of the Benelux to save it, proves that the crisis is now completely present in Europe and can be very dramatic without the intervention of all the governments. After a period of privatizations, we can see a period of nationalizations (even in USA, the liberal state).

However, even if this crisis is bad for all financial sectors (less benefits, less power...) , some banks profit of the fall of others to take more power, to grow in Europe or in the world (like HSBC, BNP Paribas or Barclay's).