Barclays Bank

A key creditor of LandSource Communities Development wants the bankrupt developer to sell its 15,000-acre tract of land north of Los Angeles to repay $1.1 billion in loans. Barclays Bank, agent for the lenders who made the loans, proposed a plan that would grant some creditors the right to trade the debt owed to them for some of LandSource's property through a bidding process. Barclays filed the proposal in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., on Oct. 13.

Dutch bank ABN Amro and British bank Barclays are in exclusive talks for a possible $160-billion merger that would be Europe's biggest financial services deal, they said Monday. Shares in ABN Amro hit a record high earlier Monday after sources familiar with the matter said Barclays had approached ABN Amro with a merger blueprint. The two banks said they were in "exclusive preliminary discussions" concerning a merger. They said the talks were "exploratory."

British bank Barclays has agreed to buy Dutch rival ABN Amro for about $91 billion in shares as it attempts to fight off rivals to clinch the world's biggest bank takeover. The takeover of Amsterdam-based ABN will create a company with about 217,000 employees, 47 million customers and the second-highest market value among European banks, after HSBC Holdings.

Bidding for one of the largest takeovers in corporate history escalated Wednesday as a group led by Royal Bank of Scotland said it planned a bid worth almost $100 billion for ABN Amro that tops Barclays' offer by more than 10%. Shareholders immediately pressured ABN to commit to accepting the highest bid, ahead of the Dutch bank's annual shareholders' meeting today, and analysts said the key battleground was LaSalle Bank Corp. in the U.S.

Dutch banking firm ABN Amro said it would let shareholders decide between a hostile 71.1-billion euro ($96.4 billion) mostly cash takeover offer from a group of banks led by Royal Bank of Scotland and a friendly all-share bid by British bank Barclays worth about 64.2 billion euros ($87.1 billion). Amsterdam-based ABN said it had received the Royal Bank of Scotland bid Saturday, but could not recommend it because RBS had also made a separate $24.5-billion offer for ABN's Chicago-based U.S.

Shares in Barclays, Britain's third-largest bank, traded higher Monday after a newspaper report that it held merger talks in October and November with San Francisco's Wells Fargo & Co. Barclays' U.S.-traded shares rose 77 cents to $45.42 on the New York Stock Exchange. Wells Fargo shares slipped 4 cents to $62.13 on the NYSE. A merger would create a global bank worth more than $100 billion.

British bank Barclays said it would buy credit card company Juniper Financial Corp. from Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce for $293 million in cash, gaining a toehold in the U.S. consumer banking market. Fast-growing Juniper, based in Wilmington, Del., has $1.4 billion in receivables and 700,000 accounts. It was founded in 2000 and issues cards for companies including hotel operator Best Western International Inc. and Frontier Airlines Inc.

Wells Fargo & Co. and Nikko Securities Co. said they agreed to sell their Wells Fargo Nikko Investment Advisors joint venture to Barclays, the British banking giant, for about $440 million. The sale, announced Wednesday and expected to close in this year's fourth quarter, will net Wells Fargo about $100 million after taxes, the firm said. Wells executives did not say how they plan to use the proceeds.