A Royal Bank of Scotland-led consortium won approval on Monday from the Dutch Finance Ministry for its bid to buy Dutch bank ABN Amro, the consortium said in a statement.
"This is an important step towards the completion of the Banks' offer for ABN Amro," the consortium added.
The ministry approved Barclays' bid for ABN last month.
The mostly-cash offer of RBS, Belgian-Dutch financial services group Fortis, and Spain's Santander, is currently worth about 70.1 billion euros ($96.7 billion), while Britain's Barclays' rival part cash, part shares offer is worth about 57.4 billion euros.