ABN AMRO said in a statement its valuation methodology was aligned in the fourth quarter to that of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which is buying its wholesale and investment banking unit and its Asian operations.
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch bank ABN AMRO NV said on Thursday it had made a 1.56 billion euro ($2.36 billion) writedown in its global markets business in its last results before being split between three buyers.
ABN AMRO said in a statement its valuation methodology was aligned in the fourth quarter to that of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which is buying its wholesale and investment banking unit and its Asian operations.
ABN said that excluding the writedown, which was due to the downturn in credit markets, adjusted net profit from continuing operations in 2007 rose 18 percent to 2.945 billion euros.
Meanwhile RBS also raised its writedown on assets affected by the U.S. subprime housing crisis and credit crunch to 2.13 billion pounds ($4.2 billion), including ABN's wholesale banking business.
!ADVERTISEMENT!ABN said its operating income rose 5 percent to 17.27 billion euros, boosted by growth in Latin America, Asia and the Netherlands.
Net profit, including a 7.16 billion euro gain from the sale of U.S. bank LaSalle, stood at 9.85 billion euros.
Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) was 1.44 euros, hit by the writedown and the continued poor performance of Italian bank Antonveneta, ABN said.
Spain's Santander is getting ABN's Italian and Brazilian operations, and Belgian-Dutch Fortis takes ABN's Dutch business, as well as its wealth and asset management operations under the takeover agreed last October.
(Reporting by Emma Thomasson and Foo Yun Chee, editing by Will Waterman)
