Wachovia bought out
by Lindsay Barnes
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The thousands of locals who have accounts with Wachovia are about to watch their money change hands. The FDIC announced this morning that Citigroup has bought out the Charlotte-based bank and will absorb $42 billion of its losses. Longtime residents will remember that it wasn’t that long ago that Wachovia was on the other end of a buyout. Back in the summer of 1997, when they gobbled up Charlottesville’s Jefferson National Bank for $542 million and Richmond institution Central Fidelity Bank for $2.3 billion.
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I’m not sure the Central Fidelity merger was a “bailout.” Were they in trouble, or was it just another case of a bigger bank absorbing a smaller one? Wasn’t it about the same time Wachovia bought Jefferson National?
I guess the good news, if there is any, is that there aren’t a whole lot of Citibank branches around Central Virginia, so perhaps the job losses here will be minimal.
Dear Music Lover,
Thanks for jogging my memory. Indeed, Wachovia bought Jefferson National a mere two weeks before they bought Central Fidelity. Note the addition above.
Sincerely,
Lindsay Barnes
So how many banks are there left in this country now that Wachovia and Washington Mutual are gone? There’s Citi, Bank of America, Wells Fargo in the West, ummm, ummm.
BB&T is left and strong.
I think there should be one bank, period! Then they could charge $5 for every check you write. A $10 fee for every bill you pay online out of your checking account (the City of Charlottesville already gets $15 if you use a bank debit card to pay monthly utilities). They could charge a $100 a month service charge for checking accounts with a balance less than $50,000 each month. They could charge you a 20% penalty for moving $5,000 from a savings account to a checking account. They could even do like DMV, they could charge you $5 extra for walking in their front door and requesting services in person rather than doing it online.
OK, on a more serious note — about 6 months ago there were rumors flying around about withdrawing your money from banks and burying it in your back yard. Nobody listened then, nobody will listen now.
And to address something noted earlier by Music Lover, Jefferson National and Central Fidelity were both willing sellers to Wachovia.
http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/economic_research/region_focus/fall_1997/feature2.cfm
Sincerely,
Lindsay Barnes