The biggest banking takeover fight has drawn to a close after nearly a half-year of battle as Barclays of Britain has withdrawn its bid for ABN Amro of the Netherlands.

A group led by the Royal Bank of Scotland now wins ABN Amro in a largely cash offer of $101 billion —and begins the long process of breaking up the bank into three pieces for each of the buyers.

ABN Amro  at first committed to Barclays, but later switched to a neutral stance when the Royal Bank of Scotland Group added more cash to its higher offer.   Barclays is entitled  to a break-up fees of 200 million euros, which the bank says will "significant exceed" the costs of takeover effort.

Speculation has been rife that with the failure to win ABN Amro, Barclays itself will now become a takeover target. The Times of London reports that there is talk that Robert Diamond, Barclay's president, will leave the bank. Diamond, an American investment banker, was seen as the architect of the strategy to pursue ABN Amro.

In a statement, John Varley, the chief executive of Barclays, said: "Barclays has strong momentum and I am confident that we will continue to deliver significant growth in the coming
years."

The acquisition will give the Royal Bank of Scotland and its partners, Banco Santander of Spain and Fortis of Belgium and the Netherlands, a greater global presence once they divide up ABN Ambro's banking businesses in Asia and Latin America.

The deal  is also significant, the Wall Street Journal reports, because of the use of a consortium to take on a huge target and then divide the spoils.

"ABN is a breakthrough," Larry Slaughter of J.P. Morgan Chase, one of the five banks that advised Barclays, told the Journal. "We see the formation of consortiums of corporates as a big event."

Consortiums may just become just a European phenomenon, however. The Journal also notes that tax laws in the United States make it harder to break up American companies.