Bank of America is looking to sell its wealth management units outside the United States, with the expectation of getting up to $3 billion in proceeds.  BofA is the world's largest wealth manager, but its non-U.S. arm - which reportedly manages some $90 billion for less-than-hight-net-worth clients - is not large enough to generate enough profit for the U.S. bank. "There is a lot of soul-searching going on by a lot of U.S. players as to what to do with their non-U.S. private banking operations," said an investment banker who has knowledge of the financial sector.  Bank of America declined to comment. Bank of America, the 2nd-largest U.S. bank by assets, has lagged peers in recovering from the financial crisis, largely because of huge losses and lawsuits tied to its 2008 acquisition of subprime mortgage lender Countrywide Financial. The bank's non-U.S. private banking business targets, so-called "mass affluent" clients whose wealth is measured in hundreds of thousands, rather than in tens of millions - held by 'super-rich private banking clients'.  Fact is, outside the U.S. the bank has never been able to build up the business to match the scale of its home market. Throughout the world, BofA manages close to $2 trillion of client assets, according to an annual benchmark study issued by consultancy firm Scorpio Partnership. Handful of Bidders. The bank reportedly asked potential suitors to put in 1st-round bids this week.  However, according to an anonymous source, "The people I spoke to are not expecting this to be a particularly rapid process, just given the broad scope of the operations' geography and the relative skinny information that was made available." As to who may be the potential bidders, there are only a handful of possible firms that could spend money on the business, including: UBS, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.  It takes a big buyer to spend upward of $2-3 billion for such an acquisition. [Reuters, 4/17/12]