What you can get for $100 billion

We all know about the damage the credit crunch has wreaked on financial institutions, but this anecdote in Anatole Kaletsky’s column today is still pretty astonishing:

“An even more spectacular case came to my attention in an e-mail I received in mid-November, when global stock markets hit their low-point (so far). Royal Bank of Scotland, my reader pointed out, spent $100 billion to buy ABN Amro, the second-biggest bank in the Netherlands, in October 2007. If only the directors of RBS had been a bit more patient, this is what they could have bought for the same $100 billion a year later: Citibank ($22 billion) plus Goldman Sachs ($21 billion) plus Merrill Lynch ($12 billion) plus Morgan Stanley ($11 billion) plus Deutsche Bank ($13 billion) plus Barclays ($13 billion). And RBS would still have had $8 billion left over to buy a golden parachute for Sir Fred Goodwin, its discredited chief executive.”