The deal will make Danske the second-biggest bank in Scandinavia, after Nordic Baltic Holding of Sweden.

Hibernia, with $7.20 billion in assets at the end of 1995, is the second-biggest Louisiana-based bank, behind the First Commerce Corporation.

Last year Mr. Flamson acquired Arizona BancWest, the second-biggest bank in that state.

Citigroup followed up less than two weeks later when it agreed to buy Grupo Financiero Banamex-Accival, Mexico's second-biggest bank, for $12.5 billion.

"We are heading for a period of lower growth," said Martin Hüfner, chief economist of HypoVereinsbank, Germany's second-biggest bank.

CIB Bank is the second-biggest commercial bank in Hungary, after the 1 January 2008 merger with Inter-Európa Bank.

Last week Citicorp, America's second-biggest bank, announced that Christopher Steffen would be joining in June the five-man team that runs the bank.

Spain's second-biggest bank will not buy sovereign debt with the proceeds, the source said, due to the European banking regulator forcing banks to mark down their sovereign holdings.

The Bank of China group has taken to capitalist-style competition so swimmingly, in fact, that it has become the second-biggest bank in the colony.

He engineered the acquisition of the biggest bank in the United States and of the second-biggest bank in Mexico along the way to creating Citigroup, the world's largest financial company.