BNP Paribas, the French bank, agreed this morning to pay €14.5 billion (£11.2 billion) in cash and shares to take control of stricken bank Fortis.

France’s biggest bank will gain control of Fortis’s banking businesses in Belgium and Luxembourg for €9 billion, funded through issuing 132.6 million new BNP Paribas shares, and Fortis Insurance Belgium for €5.5 billion in cash.

Belgium will become BNP Paribas’s largest shareholder, with a stake of around 11.7 per cent in the French bank, while Luxembourg gains a 1.1 per cent stake in BNP Paribas, which will become the biggest bank in Europe in terms of deposits.

The BNP Paribas deal means that the Belgian and Luxembourg Governments will have reduced holdings in Fortis, which, with the Netherlands, they partly nationalised last week in a €11.2 billion rescue as it teetered on the brink of collapse. The Governments will both retain blocking minority stakes in Fortis’s banking operations in their countries.

Fortis' capital base was hit by its acquisition last year of part of ABN Amro in a deal with the Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander, of Spain. Fortis shares have fallen by 70 per cent this year.

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