What $100B buys you

Floyd Norris makes an excellent point. Quoting Martin Halusa, the chief executive of Apax Partners, he posts that:

In early 2007, the Royal Bank of Scotland led a consortium that included the Fortis Group of Belgium and Santander of Spain. It paid $100 billion to acquire the Dutch bank, ABN Amro.

Had they held on to the $100 billion, those institutions could now buy Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Barclays. And they would have enough left over to buy General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.