MBNA Buys Huge Card Portfolio

- WILMINGTON, Del. (04/18/02) - MBNA Corp., thenation's largest credit card bank, said Wednesday it has acquired a$1.3 billion card portfolio from Wachovia Corp., giving it accessto 550,000 Wachovia customers. The deal extends MBNA's cardmarketing agreement with First Union Corp., to Wachovia'scustomers, following last year's merger of First Union andWachovia. MBNA, which has been buying up credit union portfoliosthe past two years holds more than $95 billion in credit cardassets.