New York  - In a surprise development, Wells Fargo bank and the fourth-largest US bank Wachovia Corp. announced Friday that Wells Fargo had entered the bidding with an offer for a complete merger with Wachovia.

The announcement said Wells Fargo had presented Wachovia with a signed and board-approved offer to buy Wachovia as an intact company in a stock-for-stock merger which could be carried out without government help.

Wachovia said it was recommending to shareholders to accept the Wells Fargo offer, in which each share of Wachovia common stock would be exchanged for 0.1991 shares of Wells Fargo common stock, representing a value of 7 dollars per share, based on Wells Fargo's closing stock price on Thursday.

The development came at the end of week in which earlier on, Wachovia had been negotiating with Citigroup for a takeover deal which would be supervised by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and would entail help from the government.

Wachovia had assets of 812.4 billion dollars and market capitalization of 33.5 billion dollars as of last June 30.

In a statement, Wachovia president and chief executive officer Robert K Steel commented, "We at Wachovia have great admiration and respect for the people and businesses at Wells Fargo and we are extremely pleased to join forces with this outstanding company." (dpa)