The Dutch-Belgian bank Fortis won approval from its shareholders on Monday to join and finance a takeover bid for Dutch banking giant ABN Amro.

The proposed bid, together with partners Royal Bank of Scotland and Spain's Santander, was backed by more than 90 percent of voters at Fortis shareholder meetings in both Brussels and later the Dutch city of Utrecht because of the company's dual-headquarters structure.

The shareholders also voted for the plan to issue new shares worth 13 billion euros (18 billion U.S. dollars) to help finance the deal.

Analysts had expected Fortis shareholders would say yes to the takeover bid, but were concerned about the bank's weakness in financing.

The three-bank consortium headed by Royal Bank of Scotland revised up their bidding price for ABN Amro last month, pledging 71.1 billion euros to buy the Dutch bank and raising the cash component of its offer to 93 percent from 79 percent before.

Fortis' prospective share of the deal is 24 billion euros, nearly two-thirds of the company's market value, which has shrunk by almost 20 percent to 37.1 billion euros since it announced its participation in the takeover bid.

Fortis needed a 50 percent vote in favor of the deal and 75 percent for its planned issuance of new shares, with both easily achieved Monday.

If the consortium bid wins, Fortis will reportedly acquire the ABN Amro's Dutch operations, which the Fortis board said will add 4.3 percent to its earnings per share by 2010.

Monday's approval from Fortis shareholders removed a major hurdle before the three-bank consortium wins a bidding war against British bank Barclays for ABN Amro.

The Britain's third largest lender formally launched its takeover bid for ABN Amro earlier Monday as the European Commission gave green light to the proposed acquisition.

Barclays said in a statement on Monday that it was offering 2.13 ordinary shares plus 13.15 euros for each ordinary share of Amsterdam-based ABN Amro, the biggest Dutch bank. The total price would be about 65.5 billion euros.

The offer would begin on Tuesday and stay open for ABN Amro until Oct. 4, the statement said.

However, Barclays' proposal still looked less attractive to shareholders of ABN Amro than that made by the three-bank consortium since the latter was mainly a cash deal.

The ABN Amro management had previously backed Barclays' offer which preserves good value to shareholders by keeping the company's core businesses intact as the consortium intends to break up ABN Amro with each of the three buying parts of its operations.

But the ABN Amro board backed away at the end of last month, saying it will remain neutral in the rival offers.

As the three-bank consortium's offer period, which started on July 23, runs one day after the expiration of Barclays', ABN Amro shareholders now have less than two months to make their choice in the world's largest ever takeover in banking sector.

ABN Amro said earlier Monday it would hold an extraordinary shareholders' meeting on Sept. 20 to discuss the rival offers.