1. In your judgment, what are likely to be some of the major challenges in assembling a buyer consortium to acquire and subsequently dismember a target firm such as ABN Amro? In what ways do you think the use of a single investment advisor might have addressed some of these issues?
2. The ABN Amro transaction was completed at a time when the availability of credit was limited due to the subprime-mortgage- loan problem in the United States. How might the use of a group rather than a single buyer have facilitated the purchase of ABN Amro?
3. The same outcome could have been achieved if a single buyer had reached agreement with other banks to acquire selected pieces of ABN before completing the transaction. The pieces could then have been sold at the closing. Why might the use of the consortium been a superior alternative?

The biggest banking deal on record was announced on October 9, 2007, resulting in the dismemberment of one of Europe’s largest and oldest financial services firms, ABN Amro (ABN). A buyer consortium consisting of The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Spain’s Banco Santander (Santander), and Belgium’s Fortis Bank (Fortis) won control of ABN, the largest bank in the Netherlands, in a buyout valued at $101 billion.