NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wachovia Corp's shareholders approved the bank's takeover by rival Wells Fargo & Co on Tuesday, bringing one of the largest mergers stemming from the financial crisis near to completion.
Separately, regional bank PNC Financial Services Group Inc
National City shares were up 5 cents at $1.66 in afternoon trading, while Wachovia fell 8 cents at $5.37, both on the New York Stock Exchange. Wells Fargo dropped 20 cents at $27.22, and PNC added 39 cents to $43.07, also on the NYSE.
Wachovia Chief Executive Robert Steel, along with three other directors, will join the Wells Fargo board on January 1. Steel, a former under secretary in the U.S. Treasury Department, had joined Wachovia in July, just months before the bank's sale.
The Wachovia takeover, which is currently worth about $11.7 billion, was approved by about 76 percent of the votes entitled to be cast.
The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year, but the integration of the two banks' systems, operations, products and services will take two to three years, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf said.
The Wachovia and National City mergers were among a series of deals struck in the last few months -- often under duress and at the urging of regulators -- as the global financial crisis deepened.
Wells Fargo won the deal to buy Wachovia in October after a brief but acrimonious battle with rival bidder Citigroup Inc
Pittsburgh-based PNC agreed to buy National City, a U.S. Midwest regional bank, later in October in a government-supported deal that is now worth about $3.8 billion.
(Reporting by Paritosh Bansal; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
