ABN Amro has held ‘exploratory talks’ with Royal Bank of Scotland on buying back some of its former businesses, the Financial Times reports on Monday.

ABN Amro’s Dutch operations were nationalised last year and the Dutch government is trying to ‘recreate a viable third large Dutch bank’, the paper says.
Finance minister Wouter Bos told the paper that there had been contact between RBS and ABN Amro.
But the idea was not to recreate the Dutch banking group as it was before 2007 when a consortium of banks, including RBS and Fortis, bought it and broke it up, the paper said.