Despite a generous offer from a consortium of buyers led by the Royal Bank of Scotland, ABN has said no to their attempt to buy LaSalle Bank.

What makes their refusal interesting is that RBS' unofficial offer was for $24.5 billion, whereas Bank of America's offer was for $21 billion. ABN agreed to Bank of America's bid for LaSalle, but the deal was frozen due to regulatory reasons: ABN was told it must get shareholder approval.

ABN says that the offer, in reality, is not better because RBS did not specify such details as how it would fund the bid. On the other hand, it is widely believed that ABN is merely stalling and trying to keep other companies from LaSalle until the Bank of America deal has an opportunity to go through.

The battle for control of ABN Amro is getting trickier for its buyers now that it has refused an offer from a consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland to buy LaSalle, the U.S. subsidiary that the Dutch bank has already promised to Bank of America.

That's despite the fact that the RBS $24.5 billion bid represents a 10% premium on BofA's $21 billion offer made in April. In a joint statement, RBS, along with Banco Santander Central Hispano and Fortis, said its proposal, which was made on May 5 and was not a formal offer, was superior "under the terms of the contract between ABN Amro and Bank of America."

(Continue reading this story on Forbes)

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