Halpert Enterprises has filed a class action lawsuit designed to halt ABN Amro's planned sale of its US bank LaSalle to Bank of America Corp. ABN Amro has entered into a deal to sell LaSalle to Bank of America for $21 billion. ABN Amro shareholders allege the deal is designed to thwart a takeover approach for the entire ABN Amro group from a consortium of banks including Royal Bank of Scotland Group, Banco Santander Central Hispano SA, and Fortis NV.
The lawsuit was filed in New York and claims ABN directors failed in their duty to shareholders by agreeing to the sale. The class action claims that the proposed sale is wrongful, unfair and harmful to ABN's public stockholders, and represents an effort by defendants to aggrandize their own financial position and interests at the expense of and to the detriment of ABN's public stockholders.
