Not so Fortis: share price falls to €1.2

After a weeklong suspension and the release of “non-audited pro-forma figures“, Fortis trading resumed on Tuesday, sparking a massacre: Fortis Euronext shares fell a whopping 77% to €1.2 euro. At the investment club conference last week – after the BeNeLux nationalization but before the BNP Paribas takeover – Fortis shares were estimated at a value between €3 to €4. In its “new constellation”, Fortis plans to focus on global insurance.

Fortis also announced that it was planning to call a shareholder meeting in eight weeks. I would give good money to attend this meeting because investors are outraged over what they see as “mismanagement” and “misinformation”. Lobbygroup Fortisaction.com argues that shareholders are left with:

• a marginalised company with a 66% stake in a structured products portfolio (worth 6,8 billion euro)
• a small insurance business that could not be sold directly (Insurance International) worth between 1,5 and 2,0 billion euro.
• no dividend
• a 90 percent decline in the shareprice.