G. Kennedy Thompson, Wachovia CEO, is the newest face on blistered ass of commercial banking. Only a month ago, the Wachovia board of directors pink slipped his job as chairman, today they gave him the old “milk crate full of your crap” treatment and told him to retire. He joins the club with other recently “retired” executives from the nation’s top financial houses. I hear their club meets on their private islands and Italian villas where they must rough-it on a fixed income.
G. Kenny will likely go down as the fool who bought Golden West and almost destroyed Wachovia, for which he should. Listening to the wrong people, he got greedy and purchased a mortgage company full of sub-prime BS loans. He’s the George W. Bush of the Fortune 500. What does this mean to the average investor, or a bank employee such as myself?
A shockwave of internal memos ripped through my bank yesterday with “talking points” about what this means for our company. Will we start losing executives too? Are we a buyout risk like Wachovia? Did we buy some stupid bank too? Who is The Stig? Serious questions and all were answered, except one. We aren’t sure if we bought a bad bank or not.
No one is in a real risk of a buyout. It would have to come from international buyers as the domestic banks would have trouble passing through the Department of Justice in merger talks. Deposit accounts would have to be divested (ie sold to other banks) so that no one bank controls a certain market. You know, thank goodness other industries aren’t allowed to have regional monopolies (cough-cough CABLE, PHONE, POWER). That’s a different argument, and I can do both sides. Whoops I digressed again. The international folks could take advantage of the weak dollar and buy in, but their knowledge of our banking laws is limited and so I cannot predict any of us big 5 banks will be bought.
So this really means nothing, and actions like this are expected. Heads need to role, investors need to point the finger at someone so that we can all move on. I stand by my earlier prediction that Wachovia may be the company to beat in the next decade. Don’t you cry for Kenny Boy, he’s been doing this for a long time and has millions in the bank, just probably not Wachovia’s bank anymore!
 By The Weakonomist |
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