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To: ~digs who wrote (1154)	7/1/2005 12:28:51 AM
From: ~digs	Respond to of 7944

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp. (BAC) said on Thursday it agreed to buy MBNA Corp. (KRB), the biggest independent credit card lender, for $35 billion, making the No. 2 U.S. bank one of the world's largest card issuers. The stock-and-cash transaction, which offered a premium of 30.6 percent for MBNA, will more than double Bank of America's card business, giving it 40 million cardholders and $143 billion in balances. Bank of America said the purchase will make it the world's largest issuer of Visa and MasterCard credit, debit and prepaid cards. It will become the leading rival in cards to Citigroup Inc. (C) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), and bigger than American Express Co. (AXP). finance.yahoo.com finance.yahoo.com Michael Mayo, a Prudential Equity Group LLC analyst, said Bank of America was paying a 21 percent premium to receivables for MBNA, above the 17 percent that Washington Mutual Inc. (WM) agreed this month to pay in its $6.45 billion purchase of card issuer Providian Financial Corp. (PVN). finance.yahoo.com finance.yahoo.com Bank of America will cut 6,000 jobs to help save $850 million a year by 2007, and take a $1.3 billion restructuring charge.