On October 5, Barclays Bank announced that it withdrew its offer to acquire 5 million shares from ABN Amro bank. If everything goes smoothly, a consortium led by the Royal Bank of Scotland will win the ABN Amro merger bid, the biggest in the banking history. Barclays offered about 61 billion euros for the bid, much less than the consortium's 71.1 billion euro offer. This is said to be the main factor that put Barclays in a minus position during the bid. Additionally, the cash payment accounted to much less in Barclays' acquisition offer than the consortium's offer.

In August, the China Development Bank (CDB) bought 3.1 percent of Barclays' shares at 7.2 pounds per share. If Barclays succeeded in the bid, CDB would hold 7.7 percent of the former. But now Barclay's share prices have plummeted to 6.16 pounds.

David Wright, vice chairman of Barclays Capital, does not believe that his company's failure in purchasing ABN Amro will affect the long-term relationship that his company has established with CDB. Their cooperation with CDB will benefit Barclays' business operations in China as well as in Asia. In the meantime, Barclays will help CDB with training seminars while CDB is being transformed from a policy bank into a commercial bank.

For more details, please read the full story in Chinese. (http://www.bbtnews.com.cn/finance/channel/political29342.shtml)

(China.org.cn October 8, 2007)