clipped from www.nytimes.com

Citigroup will acquire the banking operations of the Wachovia Corporation, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said Monday morning, the latest bank to fall victim to the mortgage market.

The F.D.I.C. said that the agency would absorb losses from Wachovia above $42 billion and that it would receive $12 billion in preferred stock and warrants from Citigroup.

“Wachovia did not fail,” the F.D.I.C. said, “rather it is to be acquired by Citigroup Inc on an open bank basis with assistance from the F.D.I.C.

Federal regulators had pressed for the sale on Sunday night. The sale would further concentrate Americans’ bank deposits in the hands of just three banks: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, whichever bank acquired Wachovia would control more than 30 percent of the industry’s deposits.

Together, those three would be so large that they would dominate the industry, with unrivaled power to set prices for their loans and services.