Market people are worried that Dexia, a Belgian bank, could be hit hard, bringing Belgian sovereign debt into the picture next.
When the government helped to bail out Dexia, a Franco-Belgian bank, last year, he picked a former adviser, Pierre Mariani, to run it.
As before, BNP will take a 75% stake in Fortis's Belgian bank, but instead of swallowing all of its Belgian insurance arm as well, it will take only 10% of that business.
The near collapse of the Franco-Belgian bank Dexia is the event that focused the minds of eurozone leaders on the urgency of putting in place a comprehensive plan to strengthen European banks in general.
The crisis of confidence in the ability of eurozone countries with huge borrowings to repay all they owe has already deteriorated into a banking crisis - whose most serious manifestation to date has been talks to rescue the big Franco-Belgian bank Dexia.
The RBS group wants to break up the lender into three parts, so that Belgian-Dutch bank Fortis would get ABN's Dutch operations, Spanish bank Banco Santander Central Hispano SA, acquires ABN's Brazilian and Italian arms, and RBS getting Chicago-based LaSalle.
The RBS group wants to break up the lender into three parts, so that Belgian-Dutch bank Fortis would get ABN's Dutch operations, Spanish bank Banco Santander Central Hispano SA (nyse: STD - news - people ), acquires ABN's Brazilian and Italian arms, and RBS getting Chicago-based LaSalle.
The European Monetary Institute opened its doors in Frankfurt under the directorship of Alexandre Lamfalussy, a Belgian who had previously run the Bank for International Settlements.
So far, for pragmatic rather than ideological reasons, the French state has bailed out just one troubled bank: Dexia, a small Franco-Belgian institution.
Belgian Liberal Philippe de Backer said people can encounter "major difficulties" without a bank account, for example in receiving wages and paying bills, because "cash is being replaced by plastic in our world".
Some had taken decisive action overnight: Belgium nationalized the Belgian assets of banking and insurance provider Fortis on Sunday, before selling a majority stake to French bank BNP Paribas, while Germany said it would guarantee all private deposits in the country.
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