Despite 9 years of procedure and negotiations, the Court of Appeal of Amsterdam has declared non-binding the €12 billion settlement agreed by Fortis (now Ageas) and the consumer associations (Deminor, StichtingFortisEffect, VEB, Sicaf…) non-binding.
In March 2016, Ageas agreed with the consumers associations to find a settlement that had to be endorsed by the Court in order for it to be binding, as provided for by the Dutch Law. In exchange for this historic compensation, consumer associations committed not to pursue legal procedures against Ageas.
The settlement provided that “The compensation to VEB, Deminor and FortisEffect is partly based on the costs of advice to, representation of and implementation of the settlement (…). For VEB, this amount is set at EUR 25 million, for Deminor at EUR 10.5 million, FortisEffect will receive EUR 7 million. SICAF will receive an amount of EUR 2.5 million, in the context of procedural costs, the costs of legal representation in the proceedings conducted in the Netherlands and the mediation, and finally the costs of implementation of the Settlement Agreement.”
The Court of Appeal’s decision was based on a discrimination between the categories of shareholders. The consumers associations provided a different compensation scheme for shareholders depending on when they had bought their shares and whether they had brought legal actions after the dismantling of Fortis.
Read the articles from L’Echo and Trends.be here and here