:quality(80)/cdn-kiosk-api.telegraaf.nl/6c2a0bde-5857-11ec-ac34-0255c322e81b.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1 "ABN Amro sells head office for €765 million | Financial")
The sale will generate a book profit of €338 million for ABN Amro. The bank includes this in the results of the fourth quarter of this year. The sale does not mean that ABN Amro will soon and permanently leave the characteristic building on the Gustav Mahlerlaan.
When the decision to sell the property was announced more than a year ago, the bank announced that it would continue to rent the entire building for a few more years. In the meantime, ABN Amro is renovating its former head office in the Bijlmer. When the renovation is completed in 2025, most of the staff will move to the Bijlmer, but the bank wants to continue to rent part of the building on the Zuidas as its official head office and as a location to receive customers.
ABN Amro says it chose Victory and G&S because the two have a ‘good track record’: “ABN Amro has explicitly taken into account the wishes of the municipality of Amsterdam with regard to the future quality of life and diversity of the city during the solicitation and selection process. south axis. As a future tenant of part of the redeveloped building, the bank itself has set additional sustainability requirements for the plans of the buyer and for the reuse of the characteristic circular pavilion Circl.”
profitability
With the sale of the head office, ABN Amro is also visually saying goodbye to the glorious history of the state bank. Inaugurated in 1999, the building was designed by architect Henry Cobb, known for the US Bank Tower in Los Angeles, the World Trade Center in Barcelona and the Goldman Sachs office at 200 West Street in New York, and was for many years an icon of the Amsterdam Zuidas and the global plans of ABN Amro.
With tears in their eyes, staff watched in 2007 how the building’s logo was replaced by Fortis after the takeover of the banking trio. A year later, euphoria reigned again when the ABN Amro shield was lifted back after the nationalization of Fortis Netherlands.
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The sale is now part of ABN Amro’s plan to maintain profitability. The bank is having a hard time due to the persistent negative interest rates at the European Central Bank (ECB) for years. At the end of last year, the target of a return of 10 to 13% on equity for the coming years was lowered to 8%.
Offices closed
For profitability, the meagerly profitable international investment bank has already been drastically cut, 15% of the staff will have to look for another job in the coming years and more branches will be closed. Also went to reduce costs headquartered in the sale. ABN Amro previously sold the office in Paris for €170 million for that reason.
Despite the declining profitability due to interest rates, ABN Amro is also sitting on a large mountain of buffer capital that is no longer needed by reducing risky loans from the investment bank. Investors rely on a super-dividend or share buy-back program, for example from the State. The question is whether the ECB will allow this now that a new corona wave is sweeping Europe. During the pandemic, the regulator previously required banks to keep their capital in cash as a precaution.
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