As many as a dozen foreign banks, including Bank of Montreal and Toronto Dominion, took a long look at Wilmington Trust.
The Delaware bank was forced to put itself up for sale this autumn after mounting losses.
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It was eventually acquired by another domestic US player, M&T Bank, at what was described by Wall Street analysts as a bargain price of about $350m in stock a reflection of Wilmingtons steadily mounting losses.
Wilmington is attractive to M&T, based in Buffalo, New York, because its wealth management unit has been a consistent earner despite the credit crisis and problems elsewhere in the bank.
Sad end to Du Pont legacy
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By GlobalDataNonetheless, this marks a sad end for the institution which was founded by the Du Pont clan.
Some members of the family had signalled as far back as the late 1990s that it was time to sell the bank.
Wilmington could have then got what some informed bankers describe as a very "full price" from a sale. But opposition within the bank to a takeover was too strong.
Instead, Wilmington diversified into areas like retail and consumer banking and subsequently racked up a mounting backlog of loan losses and quarterly earnings losses.
PBI understands that Wilmington has probably got only about a quarter of the value of what it could have achieved some 10 or more years ago.
