Dutch gov't to sell off more ABN Amro shares, reducing stake to 30%

The Dutch government wants to reduce its stake in ABN Amro from 40.5 to around 30 percent, Minister Eelco Heinen of Finance announced in a letter to parliament. Small quantities of certificates of shares in the bank will be sold daily on the stock exchange in the coming period.

The government also used this “dribble-out method” in its previous sell-off when it sold 78 million ABN Amro shares to reduce its stake to 40.5 percent. That raised 1.17 billion euros, Heinen reported last month.

According to Heinen, the NLFI, the foundation that manages government interests in financial institutions, advised that this was a good time to sell off more shares. The government decided to follow that advice.

ABN Amro was nationalized by the government during the credit crisis of 2008 to prevent the bank’s collapse. The government gradually started reducing its stake in the bank in 2015.

The bank has cost the Dutch state billions of euros more than it has yielded. Last month, Heinen told parliament that, if the government were to recoup the total amount it spent, all its remaining ABN Amro shares would have to sell at 31.49 euros each. “It is not realistic that such a price will be reached in the short term,” Heinen said. On Wednesday morning, the bank was listed at 15.74 euros.