Erasmus prof.: ABN Amro IPO will cost more than cabinet says

The ABN Amro IPO will cost much more than what Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem has told the Tweede Kamer, lower house of parliament. The minister wants to keep the cost of supervising the IPO under 1 percent, but this is not realistic. This is according to Nico van der Sar of the Erasmus School of Economics. He told BNR that you have to realize that there have been many IPO's world wide over the years. In the US the IPO's cost a "more or less fixed" amount of between 5 and 7 percent. "People sometimes call it the '7 percent rule'. Compared to the past it has gone down somewhat, but it is still quite high", Van der Sar said. "In Europe, it ranges between 3 and 5 percent. Say 4 percent for the Netherlands. It can be broke down into several categories, such as privatizations for example, where the costs would be lower. But 1 percent is very low." Van der Sar believes that Dijsselbloem knows these percentages, but is already negotiating. According to him, these figures should be seen as "correct to some extend". "A politician should obviously give the correct figures. But if they say that they expect the turnover to be 10 billion, that is then a political statement and people count on it. So if one says that the costs will be 1 percent, that is the first bet."