Deutsche Bank has walked away from negotiations to buy commercial banking operations from ABN Amro, the state-owned Dutch bank, following months of talks to renegotiate a deal that had been delayed by the financial crisis.

Fortis, the Belgo-Dutch banking and insurance group which has since been broken up, originally agreed to sell the assets to Deutsche for €709m in July last year. European competition authorities had demanded the sale as part of the approval process for the takeover of ABN Amro by Fortis, RBS and Santander in 2007.