Regarding this morning’s “Bank Of America Wins, Buys Chicago’s LaSalle Bank,” commenter “Stankwell,” whose first and only comment went up today, wrote:
LaSalle customers should be happy. Among other things, they’re gaining access to world-class online banking and a coast-to-coast branch and ATM network.
Bank of American managed to fight off a hostile take over by the Royal Bank of Scotland to acquire LaSalle Bank from its parent company ABN Amro. The Dutch Supreme court has cleared the way for Bank of America and conversion seems all but inevitable for all of you LaSalle Bank customers.
There’s a law in this country that prevents any one bank from holding over 10% of the insured deposits. If Bank of America manages to hold on to its deal to buy Chicago’s LaSalle Bank, Bank of America would hold approximately 10.7% of deposits—about 5.1 billion dollars too much.
In what would be the largest lawsuit in the history of mankind, Bank of America has threated to sue LaSalle Bank’s parent company if it fails to acquire the Chicago bank. Bank of America had a deal in place to buy LaSalle from its parent company ABN Amro, when a group of European bankers lead by the Royal Bank of Scotland stepped in with a hostile bid for the entire company. Just for some perspective on how ridiculously huge a $220 billion lawsuit is:
Now, however, a consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland aims to upset that deal with an uninvited $98.6 billion takeover offer. The Scottish bank would keep LaSalle, while a couple of partners would carve up the remaining ABN Amro operations around the world (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/26/07, “The Making of a Monolith”).
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