Wachovia should have never bought Wells Fargo.
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Wachovia loans were a flipping joke. Who lends on a boat slip. They had customers that were refinancing every few months. I don't think their loan people knew how to read a legal description based on the messes I saw. They replied on a blank title policy that was useless.
To big to fail is the problem with our financial services in our country. Time to break up the big banks and separate banking from brokerage services like it used to be in this country.
Once upon a time, Wachovia and First Union were two North Carolina banks along with NCNB. NCNB and First Union has aggressive management who correctly saw the had writing on the wall that allowed for intra-state bank mergers while Wachovia, with a sterling reputation, thought it was fools gold.
10 plus years later, Nationsbank and First union on multi-region banks while Wachovia is late to the game. Except First Union nearly goes bankrupt after making one too may purchases without good due diligence. Anyone remember the money store?? First Union buys Wachovia in a "merger" of equals. Gets to whitewash it's name while also pushing some execs to the side.
Wachovia was a well run bank whose expense ratio was very low compared to Wells. Had Wachovia not bought Golden West, well history would look different. But First Union management was always greedy, making the wrong purchases at the wrong time. Golden West and Pick-a-pay was simply a terrible purchase, bought a the exact height of the mortgage balloon. Wachovia was dying to get into California plus wanted in on those CDOs. Ken wanted to get that huge Wall Street paydays.
Citi would have gutted Wachovia. And not in a good way. But Wells never did figure out the Wachovia cost model (run like a local bank at scale for a good cost structure). Wells and Wachovia was a marriage of convenience - Wachovia without Gold West survives 2008. The fire ho-e that was Golden West would have been someone's problem.
And the whole sales scandal was all Wells legacy folks from Norwest. None of that sales culture came from Wachovia. I always wondered how Wells could grow their deposits so well at the beginning of each year.
Maybe when the feds split up the bank into regions they can use the old names.
Newsflash! We ARE Norwest. First, it was a merger so not an acquisition. Second, although Wells had a strong footprint in CA, Norwest had just as strong of one in the midwest and a ginormous Home Lending portfolio. Not convinced? Norwest called branches, “stores” and bankers, “salespeople.” Only after the sales scandal, did MM change them back to branches and bankers. At the time of the merger they were the #10 and #11 ranked banks in the US. We just chose to keep the better name/logo. There’s no better or more unique brand than the stagecoach. There’s an entire show, museums, history, symbolism and movie all built in. Now, shart has taken the ponies so it’s official-you work for Norwest, people.
We can all agree Wachovia was better than Wells Fargo though.
Walk-ovr-ya's mortgage portfolio was full of pick-a-pay garbage in 2008 which tells me that the "leadership" in that group that Wells Fargo inherited didn't learn very much from the sub-prime home equity crashes in the early 2000's. These inherited dip$hits came into WF thinking they knew all about risk, but REALLY, they were overpaid do-nothings who asked a bunch of stupid questions and flew around the country on Wells Fargo's dime, eating dinner, buying multiple rounds of drinks on their PCARDs and generally doing nothing to mitigate any risk. Basically they WERE the risk.
Obviously the primary objective was eastward expansion, but the fact remains, they could have dumped the vast majority of the people, and most banks probably would have. That's what Citi was going to do and WFs willingness to keep the company together and to not fire everyone was the primary reason the Treasury stepped in and made sure the sale to WF happened. Wachovia was inches away from being blown up and scavenged.
No one was stopping you then, or now. The door is RIGHT there.
WF wanted to expand “West of the Mississippi” ROTFL
Are you looking at a map upside down
What actually happened was that Wachovia bought Wells Fargo with Wells Fargo's money.
@1kgb+1hB3q9hq if it is true that had Citi bought Wachovia they would have fired 80% then I would have actually been better off overall. It sickening for me to think about how much better off I would have been if I had left years ago (either forced or by choice)
Wachovia before First Union merger. The FU merger was the beginning of the end
I thought Wachovia was on the brink of collapse when WF scooped it up? I worked in loss Mitigation on the World and Wachovia portfolio and rarely were the customers qualified for their mortgages. Valued based lending, qualifying on teaser rates, option arms, stated, stated, stated. Not appropriately priced for the risk and the customers still couldn't afford them. Many ruined financially. I respectfully disagree that Wachovia cared about their customers.
WF actually bought Wachovia because WF was late to the international game and buying Wachovia gave them instant presence overseas. The rest was details.
@1kgb+1hB3q9hq Wells Fargo bought Wachovia as a way to expand west of the Mississippi. They wanted to be a national bank and Wachovia’s failure conveniently made it happen. Altruism had nothing to do with it.
I never worked for Kovacevich, but I do remember prior to 2016 when we actually had a vision and strategy. Now the only thing we think about is the stupid asset cap.
I simply miss the old WF… Kovacevich days when they actually pretended to care about TEAM MEMBERS…before Stumpf and his best bud Tolstedt.
I miss AG Edwards. AG Edwards should have never bought Wachovia and Wells Fargo.
Legacy Wachovia folks should thank goodness every day that the Citi purchase didn't go through. They would have fired 80% of the company in a year or two. Hate on WF if you want, they made a commitment to keep the vast majority of Wachovia people, in the midst of a nasty recession, even though in the long term doing so resulted in a bloated/inefficient workforce. So yeah, you're welcome Wachovia guy.
If it wasn’t Wells Fargo it would have been Saudi Bank, oops I mean Citibank.
Wachovia should have never bought World Savings. The only ones who didn’t suffer from that deal were Herb and Marion Sandler. They got 2 billion. Everyone else got the shaft.
I miss Norwest
That’s like saying Wells Fargo should never have bought Norwest when it was failing.
Wachovia was just amazing to work for. Sometimes I dream about it but then I wake up.
I am so excited! That’s what “leaders” say! I am so excited about WHATEVER I AM BEING TOLD TO BE EXCITED ABOUT or else. Just sharing with my Wells Fargo FAMILY!
19 cents a share for Wachovia, lol
Maybe WF should have continued to be a delivery service, instead of getting into banking.
Imagine, red and white trucks running around looking like stage coaches delivering your cr-p.
Ha! I miss A.G. edwards & Sons, Inc. “ Trusted Advice and Exceptional Service”. But we were betrayed by Bob Bagby so he could get his thirty pieces of silver and health care for life. Between Wachovia to Wells it’s been a death spiral and embarrassment since 2006 !
Yet after all the many WF sales scandals, all of a sudden some of the old Wachovia customer service lingo and best practices were in the forefront like WF had invented it LOL. WF became all about customer service after 2016. How innovative and AMAZING!
Wells should have laid off the entire Wachovia workforce. Instead Wells was poisoned by east coast holier than thou mindset that hasn't produced or improved anything post merger.
Wachovia had great customer service. WF was all about sales, sales, sales, and it was obvious after the merger that the entire company culture would be radically different. And look what happened!
lol -- Wachovia was a mess along with many of the people there. If I remember correctly, the deal was basically engineered by the treasury dept. b/c Citi didn't want the disaster that was their loan portfolio.
Also, a lot of absolutely garbage behavior came from Wachovia and there's still plenty of clique behavior from the Charlotte crowd. There's also plenty of great people too.
Wachovia was essentially bankrupt
LOL!!!
First Union should have never bought WF
OP is stuck in the first stage of grief.
Fake news