What if you bought Fortis in 2000?
World · Belgium/NL. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play0.0× · S&P 500 same money: $4,626
$1,000 in Fortis at the start of 2000 would be worth about $33.33 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
What happened: Fortis was nationalised and carved up in 2008.
The story
Fortis was a Belgian-Dutch banking and insurance group that, in 2007, made one of the boldest moves in European banking history. Together with Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander, it bought ABN AMRO for around seventy billion euros, the largest bank takeover ever at that point. Fortis took the Dutch retail business and raised billions from shareholders to pay for it, just as the credit crisis began.
The timing was catastrophic. As credit markets froze in 2008, Fortis struggled to finance the deal and depositors grew nervous. Within days in late September and early October 2008, the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg governments stepped in. The Dutch state nationalised the Dutch operations, including its share of ABN AMRO, while the Belgian banking arm was sold to BNP Paribas. Shareholders were left with a small insurance business, renamed Ageas. Years of lawsuits by investors produced a settlement, but compensation was a fraction of their losses. Those who held from 2007 lost almost everything.
The lesson: A transformational acquisition made at the top of a credit cycle can turn a solid company into a casualty, as size and ambition multiply risk.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $30.00 | $33.33 | $4,626 | 0.0× |
| 2003 | $15.00 | $66.67 | $7,727 | 0.1× |
| 2005 | $22.00 | $45.45 | $5,763 | 0.0× |
| 2007 | $32.00 | $31.25 | $4,789 | 0.0× |
| 2008 | $18.00 | $55.56 | $4,626 | 0.1× |
| 2010 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $6,071 | 1.0× |
| 2012 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $5,312 | 1.0× |
| 2015 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $3,301 | 1.0× |
| 2018 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $2,519 | 1.0× |
| 2020 | $1.00 | $1,000 | $2,092 | 1.0× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2010, turning $1,000 into $1,000. The S&P 500 from that same year: $6,071.
On this day
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. Fortis is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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