Royal Bank of Scotland , Spain's Santander and Belgian-Dutch group Fortis said on Friday they expected to issue offer documents in relation to their €71 billion bid for ABN AMRO by mid-July.
The three banks are seeking to overturn an agreed all-share bid for the Dutch bank by Britain's Barclays, worth about €64 billion at current prices.
"The banks remain convinced that their proposed offer represents superior value for ABN AMRO shareholders and significant benefits for customers and employees," the consortium said in today's statement.
They said extraordinary general meetings of their shareholders to vote on the potential deal would be held by the first half of August.
But the key issue for all the parties is a ruling by the Dutch Supreme Court expected by mid-July over the suspended sale of Chicago-based bank LaSalle, which ABN agreed to sell to Bank of America in April in a side deal to the Barclays merger.
Barclays' offer for ABN is conditional on LaSalle being sold, while the RBS consortium's offer is conditional on LaSalle remaining part of ABN. The consortium and some ABN investors then succeeded in getting Amsterdam's commercial court to freeze the La Salle sale because it was a pivotal deal that needed shareholder approval, even though ABN was not required to seek approval to sell the US bank. A takeover of ABN would be the biggest bank takeover.