The new company will have 220,000 employees and 47 million customers APA reports.

The two banks also said in the statement that with the tie-up 12,800 jobs would be shed and 10,800 would be sub-contracted.
As part of the deal, ABN announced it is selling its U.S. unit LaSalle Bank to Bank of America Corp. for $21 billion in cash.

The proposed chief executive of the new group, Barclays CEO John Varley, called the deal "the largest merger ever in global financial industry," and said it holds out the promise of growth at a rate twice as fast as global GDP.

Varley said the deal was worth $91.16 billion, a 33 percent premium from ABN share price when talks began last month.

The group said it expected to see $4.8 billion in annual cost savings by 2010.

For 2006, ABN net profit rose 7.7 percent to $6.42 billion. Barclays posted an annual net profit of $9.14 billion, a rise of a third from 2005.