San Francisco based Wells Fargo won its three-month effort to takeover another California based bank today. First Interstate agreed to be acquired in a stock transaction valued at $11.6 billion. If the deal is approved by regulators it will be the largest merger in U.S. banking history. The deal is expected to eliminate as many as 7,000 jobs, half of them in the Los Angeles area, as hundreds of First Intersate branches are closed.
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