BoA rules out higher LaSalle bid: media
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp.'s (BAC.N) CEO Kenneth Lewis is ruling out a higher offer than the agreed $21 billion for Dutch ABN AMRO Holding NV's AAH.AS LaSalle Bank Corp. unit, a German newspaper quoted him as saying.
"We have an agreement, according to which ABN AMRO guarantees that we can take over LaSalle without approval from (ABN AMRO's) shareholders," Lewis told the daily Handelsblatt in a preview of an article due for publication in Monday's edition.
The deal was announced in connection with ABN AMRO agreeing to be acquired by British bank Barclays Plc (BARC.L) for $85 billion.
A consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L) (RBS) is considering a higher counter-bid for ABN AMRO in a proposed deal that would include LaSalle, which has $113 billion of assets.
"A sale (of LaSalle) to somebody else, like RBS, would cost us the billions of dollars that we could earn in the United States through the acquisition and integration of it into our bank," Handelsblatt quoted Lewis as saying.
He also said that Bank of America could imagine buying a European investment bank but that prices were "very high" at the moment.
