Continental Europe could not escape the global banking turmoil yesterday as Fortis, the Belgian-Dutch institution, was forced to deny speculation that it was about to go out of business after announcing an acceleration of asset sales.

With its shares tumbling for the fifth consecutive day and with the Dutch central bank apparently seeking to shore up its financial base, Fortis announced plans to offload assets worth up to €10 billion (£7.9 billion). Shares in Fortis fell €1.33, or 20.3 per cent, to close at €5.20.

Herman Verwilst, the interim chief executive, convened a media conference in an effort to reassure the markets that the bank was not about to follow Lehman Brothers’ example. “There is not a single chance that we will face an issue in that respect,” he said.

Mr Verwilst said that he was flabbergasted by the market valuation of Fortis at about €14 billion, asserting that it was worth far more than that: “If you add the value of all the different parts of Fortis,” he said, “it is significantly higher.”

The board of Fortis later nominated Filip Dierckx as the new chief executive to succeed Mr Verwilst, after approval by a shareholder meeting.

Mr Dierckx, 52, has been a member of Fortis’s executive committee and chairman of the Fortis Bank executive board since January 1.

Mr Verwilst is to stay on as a nonexecutive director.

Amid rumours that customers were starting to withdraw their money from the bank, Didier Reynders, the Belgian Finance Minister, called for calm and offered his assurance that deposits were safe. He said: “In Belgium, as in the rest of Europe, we guarantee that we will leave no customer, no saver, in difficulty.”

Fortis also sought to soothe fears. The bank said that depositors had withdrawn less than 3 per cent of their total assets, that it had a diversified funding base of more than €300 billion and that its solvency was well above the regulatory minimum.

The bank became the focus of investor concern amid doubts over its solidity after its €24 billion participation in the consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland that took over ABN Amro, the Dutch bank, last year. This summer Fortis announced a €1.5 billion share issue, a dividend suspension and asset sales as part of a plan to raise €5 billion to maintain its solvency targets after the ABN Amro raid. The plan infuriated shareholders and forced the resignation of Jean-Paul Votron as the bank’s chairman and chief executive.

Investor anger is unlikely to subside after the statement yesterday that Fortis was seeking asset sales of between €5 billion and €10 billion to shore up its capital.

After writedowns totalling €2.9 billion in the past three quarters as a result of its exposure to the sub-prime mortgage market, Fortis was “ready to put everything up for sale,”L’Echo, the Belgian financial daily, reported. Fortis denied reports that the Dutch central bank was pressing other banks to pump up its liquidity position.

Concerns spread to Asia, as shares in Ping An Insurance, China’s second-biggest insurer, which has a 5 per cent stake in Fortis, dropped by 10 per cent.

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