By Tom Sims

FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Deutsche Bank has made a settlement offer with shareholders who had sued Germany’s largest bank for underpaying them for the acquisition of Postbank, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said on Friday.

The lawyer, Jan Bayer (OTC:), rejected the bank’s proposal as a “crackhead” offer that is “dead on arrival”.

Deutsche Bank said it would not comment on the talks.

“As we’ve stated in the past, we are in settlement discussions with various groups of plaintiffs within the several Postbank takeover proceedings,” Deutsche Bank said in a statement.

A key element of the settlement is an offer to pay 36.50 euros per Postbank share. 

Any settlement would mark a significant development in years-long litigation that has cast a shadow over Deutsche and had recently forced it to set aside 1.3 billion euros ($1.43 billion) ahead of any possible payout.

($1 = 0.9105 euros)