A German provincial state-owned bank caught up in the US housing market turmoil has been sold, reliable sources in the financial world said Sunday, according to dpa. The Landesbank Sachsen was bought for around 300 million euros (405 million dollars) by another state-owned lender, the Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg, the sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. A consortium of German banks was forced last week to throw a financial lifeline of 17.3 billion euros to the Landesbank Sachsen after it was unable to cover the debts of Ormond Quay, an investment fund under the management of its operations in Dublin. It was the second German bank that had to be bailed out after exposure to credit markets caught in the wash of the US housing market crisis. The IKB bank - a relatively small financial house that lends to medium-sized businesses - was subject to a 3.5-billion-euros rescue operation last month by the state-owned KfW - a bank set up immediately after World War II to finance Germany's reconstruction.
