Republic New York Corp again delayed a special shareholders' meeting to vote on the New York bank's $10.3 billion (€9.6 billion) merger deal with Britain's largest banking group, HSBC Holdings, because of a continuing probe into Republic's brokerage unit.

Republic said it would delay the meeting until October 29th from October 12th, because it wants to wrap up an investigation into its brokerage unit's dealings with a New Jersey fund manager, Mr Martin Armstrong.

Mr Armstrong was indicted on Thursday for allegedly defrauding Japanese investors out of $1 billion. The bank has already delayed the meeting once from an original date of September 9th.