The break-up of Fortis began last night when the Dutch Government bought the Benelux financial group’s Netherlands operations in a €16.8 billion (£13 billion) rescue. Fortis is already partly state-owned after the governments of Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg each took a stake in it at the weekend at a cost of €11.2 billion.

The new agreement, made on Thursday night after talks between the three governments, came after stock markets closed. Fortis shares ended down by 0.79 per cent at €5.42 on Euronext.

Wouter Bos, the Dutch Finance Minister, said the deal was an “extraordinary intervention” made necessary after Fortis’s funding difficulties worsened in the week. The deal generated cash that would be used by Belgium to keep the bank open, he said. A Dutch Government statement said: “This measure is temporary: once the international financial system has settled, the institutions will be privatised.”

Yves Leterme, the Belgian Prime Minister, admitted yesterday that the decision to offload the Dutch banking and insurance business on the Dutch Government was necessary to keep the bank afloat. The Dutch Government feared that the possibility of Fortis collapsing could compromise the Netherlands’ own financial system, including endangering savers’ cash.

Filip Dierckx, Fortis’s chief executive, said: “It’s clear that by this sale we are going to improve our financial position again and can then further build our activities in and outside Belgium.” The deal includes the retail and commercial banking business that Fortis acquired as part of a Royal Bank of Scotland-led consortium last year.

Jan-Peter Balkenende, the Dutch Prime Minister, said that his country had not yet decided what to do with the assets. ING, Fortis’s Dutch rival, was seen as the most likely private sector bidder for the business but decided midweek not to make a move.

The deal will override the Dutch part of the weekend’s agreement, in which the three governments each took a stake in Fortis’s local banking activities. Fortis’s Belgian insurance and banking businesses, plus the international insurance business, are all that remain of the group. Belgium and Luxembourg will retain their 49 per cent stakes in the banking operations.

Fortis was the first continental victim of the credit crunch to be taken into government ownership. It bought into ABN Amro at the top of the market, paying €24.4 billion for its share of the Dutch bank as part of a €72 billion buyout. In June, in order to prop up its balance sheet, the bank was forced into an €8.3 billion capital-raising programme, including a €1.5 billion rights issue, scrapping its interim dividend and selling assets. Jean-Paul Votron, its chief executive, was ousted by infuriated shareholders after the shares lost 80 per cent of their value.

The agreement with the Dutch Government is likely to come as a small relief to Royal Bank of Scotland shareholders, who had been concerned that the bank had some residual exposure to the ABN assets held by Fortis.

After the acquisition of ABN, the assets were placed in a holding company called RFS, of which RBS retains control. Each asset is released from RFS into the hands of one of the three banks only when the Dutch financial regulator gives permission, having judged each is ready for integration.

The Dutch business and ABN’s private bank, both of which were due to go to Fortis, and some shared head office functions are the last pieces of ABN left in RFS. RBS had told investors that, even if Fortis had failed to sell the ABN assets, they would not end up on the Scottish bank’s books. But RBS’s shares underperformed the sector all week as a result of the worry.

Meanwhile, Iceland said that it planned to introduce measures next week to bolster financial stability.

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