The Financial Times reports that the German private Schmidtbank is to sell its online brokerage, Consors.
Paul Wieandt, the bank's new chairman, is calling for bids from any domestic or foreign party but is ruling out any break up of the online broker, writes the paper.
Potential bidders include Commerzbank, which controls Comdirect, Postbank, the banking arm of Deutsche Post, and Fimatex, the Internet broker controlled by Societe Generale.
Bankhaus Metzler, a Frankfurt private bank, is understood to be co-ordinating the sale.