ABN AMRO says on track for 2007 EPS target

Dutch bank ABN AMRO NV reiterated its 2007 earnings per share target of 2.30 euros ($3.19) on Monday despite current market turmoil and said it has very limited exposure to the subprime market.

ABN will hold a shareholders meeting on Thursday to discuss two competing takeover bids.

Based on the results as per August year-to-date, we are on track to deliver an earnings per share (EPS) of approximately 2.30 euros on an adjusted basis, notwithstanding the impact of the current turmoil in financial markets... and continued disappointing performance of Antonveneta, the bank said.

ABN AMRO shares were up 0.5 percent at 35.2 euros by 0740 GMT, outperforming a 0.7 percent drop in the blue chip index.

The remarks with regard to the liquidity of the bank are good news for ABN AMRO... (taking into account that ABN AMRO is one of the biggest issuers of commercial paper), said Ton Gietman at Petercam.

Due to slightly higher demand for capital from its businesses, ABN said capital ratios may be marginally below target ratios at the end of the third quarter.

It said it would maintain a strict capital discipline and expects to meet its capital ratio targets of a core tier 1 ratio of 6 percent and a tier 1 ratio of 8 percent by end-2007.

ABN said it has not revised its loan loss provision forecast despite the current financial market problems and that it has a substantial liquidity buffer.

The current credit squeeze, due to problems in the U.S. subprime market, has claimed two casualties in Germany. On Friday, the Bank of England stepped in to rescue Northern Rock, Britain's fifth-biggest mortgage provider.

In line with previous statements we expect the loan loss provisioning for our consumer portfolio to increase with the growth of the portfolio and to see somewhat higher levels of provisioning in the commercial portfolio due to the absence of write-backs and releases, it said.

Royal Bank of Scotland, together with Belgian-Dutch financial services group Fortis and Spain's Santander, has offered 71 billion euros for ABN, while rival bidder Barclays has an all-share offer worth about 11 billion euros less.

On Sunday the bank said it remained neutral on the rival bids, but Chief Executive Rijkman Groenink said that the RBS-led consortium is likely to win the battle.

The Dutch Finance Ministry is expected to say on Monday whether it has any objection to the RBS consortium's takeover plan. On Aug. 13, it issued a declaration of no objection to the Barclays bid.