Was ABN Amro a deal too far for Fred the Shred?

The title of the worst deal in British corporate history is hotly contested. Glaxo and SmithKline were worth £107 billion on the day they announced their merger: eight years later, they’re worth £57 billion, and they’re not quite the ‘kings of science’ their chief executive Jean-Pierre Garnier said they would be. Getting on for a decade after it paid £75 billion for Mannesmann of Germany in Europe’s largest hostile bid, Vodafone still hasn’t recovered. Capping both of those, Lord Simpson’s foray into the American telecoms industry after he took over at GEC and renamed it Marconi is always going to take some beating for the speed and thoroughness with which he destroyed one of Britain’s largest companies.

Sir Fred Goodwin’s acquisition of the Dutch bank ABN Amro last year on behalf on Royal Bank of Scotland may never quite claw its way into such a pantheon. Still, it is already looking like one deal too many, and one that may take many years to justify to shareholders.