In only a year, the Bank of New England was transformed from a regional banking powerhouse into a ward of the state, waiting for Federal regulators to choose how and when they will sell it.

The merger will create a Midwestern banking powerhouse, the First Chicago NBD Bank Corporation, ranked No. 8 in the country with $120 billion in assets.

Banc One, the nation's 10th-largest banking company, has mostly been on the sidelines of the merger game after a 25-year string of ever-bigger acquisitions that turned it into a national banking powerhouse.

As the fortunes of the Zurich-based banking powerhouse have turned increasingly sour, there has been widespread speculation that he would be forced out or forced to give up one corporate hat.

HSBC is one of Asia's few remaining banking powerhouses, and its involvement in the restoration of the South Korean banking system would have been reassuring to many investors.

Mr. Tzur said the firm beat out First Union, the banking powerhouse, to set up an employee stock-ownership plan.

Fleet Financial, headed by Terrence Murray, is a banking powerhouse in and beyond New England.

The application almost immediately ignited opposition from lawmakers, consumer groups and financial companies who worried that the company would use its reach to become a retail banking powerhouse.

The NCNB Corporation, a fast-growing banking powerhouse from the Southeast, is negotiating to acquire another large Southeast banking company.

The old banking powerhouse, Augsburg, lies in Swabia.