BANKING

First Bank Rebuts Allegation of Charge: First Bank System Inc. lashed back at charges by Wells Fargo & Co. and others that it has used stock buybacks to inflate its bid for First Interstate Bancorp. Minneapolis-based First Bank disclosed that it has purchased 3.1 million of its own shares of its stock since Oct. 1 under a buyback program that had been announced well before it unveiled its merger agreement with Los Angeles-based First Interstate on Nov. 5. “This has not been a clandestine, recently conceived, merger-related tactic,” the company said in its statement. San Francisco-based Wells, whose hostile takeover bid was rejected by First Interstate, has charged in a lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court that First Bank’s repurchases were meant to “raise artificially the value of its offer and thereby to mislead the First Interstate stockholders.”