Occupy protesters, taking aim at what they dubbed Wall Street West, were arrested after converging on Wells Fargo & Co.’s headquarters in San Francisco today in a bid to shut down the city’s Financial District. Demonstrators shouting “Give Us Our Money Back” and saying they wanted the bank to stop foreclosures chained themselves to entrances of the bank. Seven people were arrested, according to police Lieutenant Liam Frost. The arrests were made at the request of a Wells Fargo representative, Frost said. [BW, related]
Wells Fargo
John Stumpf: The Only People Who Care About League Tables Are Those At The Bottom Of Them
By Bess Levin
As you may have heard, Wells Fargo has been doing pretty well for itself lately and in last quarter in particular, when it beat expectations with a $4.1 billion profit. Others? Not so much. Not bad for ole WFC, who other banks (no names- Citi, JPMorgan, Bank of America) have thought they were better than all these years, and who Vikram once said would top league tables “when the New York Fed gets par for the Maiden Lane portfolio,” is it? Not that it’s a big deal to anyone out west. Continue reading »
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Banks
Could Moody’s Saying BofA Is Not Too Big To Fail Make BofA Not Too Big To Fail?
By Matt Levine
Michael Feroli at JPMorgan had an interesting note this morning (via ZH) on the Republican letter to Bernanke, pointing out that this sort of saber-rattling against easing might actually make it more likely as a way for the Fed to assert its independence.
Moody’s downgrade of BAC/WFC/C, on the other hand, may have the opposite effect, precisely because the government hasn’t yet been able to declare its independence from the ratings agencies. Moody’s cut the banks’ credit ratings because they think the government is less likely to bail them out if they run into trouble. And that downgrade itself may have the effect of making the government less likely to bail out the banks if they run into trouble.
Continue reading »
Patrick Rogers, pictured at left, was just going about his business one day when Wells Fargo rather rudely informed him that the the $180,000 insurance policy on his home wasn’t good enough– they wanted the place insured for $1 million. Rogers disagreed and told Wells Fargo that he would not be following through with their demands. The bank’s representatives decided they didn’t care and went to the insurance company themselves and “forced” the policy. “You can imagine a premium on something like that,” Rogers says. This was the “genesis of a dispute” between Wells and Patty, who did not take the bank’s bull shit lying down. He found a little known law from the 1970′s that said if Wells didn’t acknowledge and respond to his inquiries, he could take them to court, which he did, and ultimately “ordered a sheriff’s sale on their downtown branch in Philadelphia.” This is his story. Continue reading »
Wells Fargo CFO Howard Atkin informed people last week that he was resigning from the firm, in announcement that employees and regulators apparently did not see coming (even hours prior, senior executives were said to be “aware” of Atkins’ plan). Today Chris Whalen has a theory. Continue reading »
Sorry enough to supposedly have John Stumpf call the victim and apologize though not sorry enough to return it will a full tank, she says. Continue reading »
You like him! You really like him! Kind of!
The president may not appreciate them but you know what? Screw that guy. JD and LB don’t need him when they’ve got the votes of MBA Candidates. CNN Money’s annual ranking of the top companies business students want to work for is out and apparently these kids want a piece of James D and his li’l buddy more than ever before, clocking in at 7 and 3 respectively, moving up one and two slots each, with the extra love for GS being attributed to the gluttons for punishment at GS just dying to have Matt Taibbi throw scalding hot coffee in their faces (the school even added a class to prepare its graduates for that exact scenario this year). Also making progress with the business leaders of tomorrow was Citi, which jumped from the 59th to the 51st slot, just losing out in popularity to UBS. Still beat HSBC (76) though, so, something to be happy about. Continue reading »
It’s been a profitable week for Little Tim Geithner and the Treasury boys. Hot on the heels of the news that it’s getting its money back from those deadbeats at Citigroup and Wells Fargo comes its successful sale of those zero-cost warrants it got from TCF Financial Corp., a Minnesota bank.
The Treasury turned a tidy $9.45 million profit on the TCF warrants, getting twice the minimum bid price of $1.50 apiece in a Dutch auction. The warrants don’t expire for another nine years, during which time TCF’s share price only has to rise $3.50 to make them worth exercising.
Yea, it’s a drop in the bucket. Yea, there’s still $60 billion in TARP money outstanding. But let’s give this one to the little guy. He’s already been overshadowed–not difficult, we understand–by Big Ben’s big win and fancy Time magazine cover. But for the first time in a long time, it hasn’t been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week for the Treasury Secretary. As of Wednesday morning, anyway.
Why (serious question) do they have to raise any capital at all? Isn’t the fact that they’re “the world’s most global bank in a world that becomes more global every day” good enough? Would a free coupon to Tickle a Vickle Town do the trick?
The disagreements are related to last week’s announcement by the Treasury Department that Bank of America Corp. won approval to repay its $45 billion in federal aid. The Charlotte, N.C., bank sold about $19 billion in common stock late Thursday as part of its repayment strategy.
Wells Fargo doesn’t much care what the government thinks. It heard about Bank of America paying its TARP money back, all $45 billion. But John Stumpf, Dick Kovacevich & Co. don’t much care about that, either.
They’ll pay their TARP money back whenever they goddamn well please. They didn’t want it in the first place, so they’re going to take their sweet time, being careful to wrap each of the 25 billion dollar bills in canine excrement before stuffing them in a Hallmark card and mailing them to Tim Geithner’s unsold New York home.
But enough about Wells Fargo. Let’s get to the real issue: Ken Lewis.
