Bank bids for LaSalle

London, May 6: Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and its partners have made an indicative offer worth $24.5 billion for ABN AMRO’s US arm, LaSalle Bank, conditional on them also buying the rest of ABN, sources said. The group of RBS, Spain’s Santander and Belgian-Dutch Fortis will also propose an offer of about 39 euros per share, including a 60 euro cent dividend for all of ABN. This will value the Dutch bank at about 72 billion euros and will make it the biggest bank takeover.

Double tax

Dubai, May 6: Foreign institutional investors from the UAE may now route their investments from Mauritius to minimise tax as India and the Gulf country are amending their bilateral double taxation avoidance agreement.

RIL gas

New Delhi, May 6: Reliance Industries is likely to appeal against Bombay High Court in a day or two. The court had restrained it from selling half of the intended gas output from its KG-D6 block to parties other than firms controlled by Anil Ambani.

Telecom tower

Mumbai, May 6: Essar Telecom Tower and Infrastructure, GTL Infrastructure and Srei Group’s Quipo will invest around Rs 5,000 crore to set up around 18,000 towers this fiscal. Trai estimates the country needs around 330,000 towers by 2010 against approximately 100,000 now to achieve a 500-million subscriber base.

Oman LNG

Dubai, May 6: India plans to get additional liquefied natural gas from Oman to meet its future energy requirements.