New York/London, Sep 27 : Financial turbulence in the US took yet another toll with America's sixth largest bank, Wachovia, starting preliminary talks with potential buyers including Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Spain's Banco Santander, media reports say.
The reports about Wachovia looking for a bailout buyer appeared in media a day after the collapse of Washington Mutual, the biggest bank failure of US history.
According to reports, Wachovia has assimilated distressed assets worth USD 122 billion on account of its exposure in the housing mortgage.
Wachovia, according to its website, has assets of over USD 800 billion and its brokerage operations manage USD 1.1 trillion of client assets.
"Wachovia approached potential buyers, including Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Spain's Banco Santander, on Friday after a 27 per cent plunge in its shares deepened fears over the future of the sixth-largest US bank," UK daily Financial Times reported.
After assessing the fallout situation of its shares, Wachovia executives led by its CEO Robert Steel contacted Citi, Wells and Santander, the report said.
These three financial majors - Citi, Wells and Santander- were also interested to buy Washington Mutual Inc but ultimately JP Morgan acquired most of the WaMu.
However, US financial daily Wall Street Journal reported that, "Wachovia officials don't believe they need to rush into a deal, and the bank isn't feeling immediate pressure on its financial condition," quoting people familiar with the company.
"...In recent weeks, Wachovia had been talks about a potential merger with Morgan Stanley. But that scenario was apparently put on hold by Morgan's move Sunday night to convert into a bank holding company instead of an investment bank," WSJ added.
Further, it would be difficult for any rival to buy the bank unless the US government helped to clean up a balance sheet saddled with USD 122 bn of distressed assets, FT said quoting people close to some of the potential buyers.
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