The shareholders in British hedge fund TCI must be rubbing their hands with glee now that the prospect of a bidding war between Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland for ABN Amro is opening up. Barclays and ABN Amro announced this morning that they have reached agreement on a merger: a deal which pushed up ABN Amro shares to over €36.

That is an awful lot higher than when TCI first started shouting that the biggest Dutch bank was not performing as well as it could. ABN Amro shares then were trading at around €26.
So TCI has earned a nice fat profit for sending a couple of angry letters to people.
Of course, while Barclays and ABN Amro have both recommended that their shareholders accept the deal, Royal Bank of Scotland and its consortium are still waiting in the wings.
Analysts smell a higher bid from the Scots. TCI and its fellow shareholders must be even happier. They’ve got exactly what they wanted.
ABN Amro’s top dog Rijkman Groenink is a happy man as well. Some suggest he will make €3.5m out of the deal.
Not so happy are the 20,000 or so Barclays and ABN Amro workers who may find themselves out of a job or replaced by someone from a low-wage country.