“am so glad that Wachovia bought my bank (world savings and loan) a year ago or so. /sarc”
If I am not mistaken, it is the World Savings portfolio that Wachovia is choking on.
From WSJ website, about six weeks ago:
A lot of this pain can be traced back to Wachovia’s errant 2006 acquisition of mortgage lender Golden West Financial. The entire market value of Golden West–which Wachovia bought for $25.5 billion–has nearly disappeared. Even on the day the deal was announced in May 2006, investors hated it so much that they slammed $1 billion out of Wachovia’s market value. At the time, Wachovia had a market cap of $90.2 billion and predicted that with Golden West its combined market cap would be $117 billion; today Wachovia’s market cap is hovering around $25.87 billion, or just a little more than Wachovia paid to acquire Golden West. Wachovia this year procured a capital infusion of around $8 billion because of that pain. Wachovia’s net slid last year to $6.3 billion from $7.7 billion in 2006, mainly because of bad loans made by Golden West. Former Wachovia CEO G. Kennedy Thompson (left) lost his job last month in large part because of the fallout. And Wachovia’s stock price today–cover your eyes–was a piddling $12.24 at the open, or just about a quarter of the 52-week high of $53.10 in September.
Considering all these signs, it may be time to enshrine Wachovia’s acquisition of Golden West Financial as a Deal From Hell.
Thanks for the info. I do not know who owns what anymore, in the financial area. Holding companies in the shadows. I guess.