BRUSSELS (AFP) — The European Commission approved on Wednesday Deutsche Bank's purchase of some ABN Amro assets from rival banking and insurance group Fortis.
"The commission concluded that the operation would not significantly impede effective competition," Europe's top antitrust watchdog said in a statement.
Fortis said in July it would sell some of ABN Amro's commercial banking activities in the Netherlands to Germany's Deutsche Bank for 709 million euros (996 billion dollars) in cash.
Fortis had to sell those assets in order to get EU regulatory approval for the takeover of ABN Amro last year as part of a consortium with Britain's RBS and Santander of Spain.
The purchase of those assets has since proved to be a bane for Fortis as questions about the financing for the operation in part forced the group into a liquidity crisis over the weekend.
In order to keep it afloat, the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg governments hastily arranged a 11.2 billion euro bailout of Fortis on Sunday through its part-nationalisation.
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