Posted on 09/26/2008 2:18:18 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
Wachovia has begun preliminary talks with Citigroup about a potential merger, people briefed on the matter said Friday afternoon.
Feelers have also been extended between Wachovia and Wells Fargo and Spain’s Banco Santander, these people said.
These talks are early, however, and no deal may emerge from them.
(Excerpt) Read more at dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com ...
FR Keyword: moneylist
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lol Time to turn off the direct payroll deposits.
Watch out Citi they will walk all over you.
That’s not an ‘uh oh’, that is good, it is the market taking care of itself. Kind of like WaMu last night. The market took care of it. JP Morgan Chase bought all their assets and even returned over a billion dollars of unused FDIC money to the treasury. No bailout needed.
Wachovia is in the process of spending a ton of money to completely gut a commercial property corner building (that was not a bank previously) and redo it to open a Wachovia bank.
I guess even as the wheels are obviously falling off, they’re still busy expanding. Amazing!
We’ll wake up Monday morning and they’ll just be one BANK!!! OMG! and ONE GOVERNMENT!!
OMG!
One Big Happy Family!
“lol Time to turn off the direct payroll deposits.”
And that’s exactly the kind of lemming-over-the-cliff thinking that would turn a downturn into a depression. “Bank Run”, anyone?
Economics is largely a head game. What we need to do is simmer down and screw our heads on straight, not go screaming over the cliff.
Wachovia made one of the biggest blunders in banking history when it acquired Golden West at the height of the housing bubble. WB wanted a presence on the West Coast but it added $120 billion in toxic pay option ARMs that are especially concentrated in the tanking CA real estate market. The WB CEO who orchestrated the deal Ken Thompson was fired a few months ago. It would of probably been a lot cheaper if WB opened a retail network out West from scratch. If WB stayed put it would of been strong enough to weather the storm.
What was funny I attended a mortgage securities conference a year ago and a rep from Wachovia was talking about how these pay option ARMs are not so risky. I was laughing inside unfortunately a merger with Citi will result in a lot of layoffs as the two bank have a lot of overlap on the East Coast.
Even in good times, every bank is always for sale for all time.
They better talk real fast. Tuesday is 9/30/08 end of the third quarter when we will see banks report our their year to date earnings. I think Wachovia is going to show poorly, (just my opinion).
It was more of a tongue in cheek remark. I should have added an /s tag. :p
I think Rush was really onto something the other day when he was talking about the governement making lots of money on the bailout to enact even bigger government and fund all of Nobama’s new spending.
He does have a lot of rich friends you know.
Could be good news or increasing itself to be the too big to fail model.
WAMU said that’s why they went under...”a wave of withdrawals”.
No “uh oh” about it. This is the free market doing it’s thing. “Uh oh” would be a “bailout”.
That’s the way I am looking at it too. Mergers are a normal course of business in the banking world and I am happy to see some normalcy right now.
Wachovia hires a Treasury insider to lift it out of its banking woes
By Eric Dash
Published: July 10, 2008
From his perch inside the Treasury Department, Robert Steel has wrestled with the troubles plaguing America’s financial industry. Now he will confront those problems up close at the Wachovia Corporation, one of the nation’s largest banks.
On Wednesday, Wachovia ended its six-week search for a new leader when it named Steel, the under secretary of the Treasury for domestic finance, as its chief executive.
(snip)
Steel, a former vice chairman at Goldman Sachs, played a crucial role in formulating the Bush administration’s response to the running crisis in the mortgage markets. He also championed a controversial plan by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr., a colleague at Goldman, to overhaul the financial industry’s regulatory apparatus.
(snip)
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http://freerepublic.info/focus/f-news/1965976/posts
Duke bolsters legal team in fighting lawsuit (Duke Hires Jamie Gorelick)
The Herald-Sun (Durham) ^ | Feb 6, 2008 | By Ray Gronberg
Posted on Wednesday, February 06, 2008 1:14:50 PM by Ken H
DURHAM — Duke University has added a former deputy attorney general of the United States to the legal team that will defend it against a federal civil-rights lawsuit filed by three members of the 2005-06 men’s lacrosse team.
Court papers filed this week indicate that Washington, D.C., attorney Jamie Gorelick will assist two Greensboro litigators in representing the school.
They’re also the attorneys of record for the Duke University Police Department, Board of Trustees Chairman Robert Steel, school President Richard Brodhead and numerous other university officials.
(snip)
FYI (apologies if you already know this), Golden West founders also are the money and originators of MoveOn.org.
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