38 Facts About Wachovia Corporation

1.

Wachovia Corporation was a diversified financial services company based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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2.

Wachovia Corporation provided a broad range of banking, asset management, wealth management, and corporate and investment banking products and services.

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3.

Wachovia Corporation provided global services through more than 40 offices around the world.

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4.

The Wachovia Corporation brand was absorbed into the Wells Fargo brand in a process that lasted three years.

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5.

Wachovia was the product of a 2001 merger between the original Wachovia Corporation, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and Charlotte-based First Union Corporation.

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6.

In 2009, Wachovia Corporation Securities was the first Wachovia Corporation business to be converted to the Wells Fargo brand, when the business became Wells Fargo Advisors.

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7.

Wachovia Corporation has its origins in the Latin form of the Austrian name Wachau.

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8.

The area formerly known as Wachovia Corporation now makes up most of Forsyth County, and the largest city is Winston-Salem.

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9.

In 1991, Wachovia entered the South Carolina market by acquiring South Carolina National Corporation, founded as the Bank of Charleston in 1834.

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10.

In 1998, Wachovia Corporation acquired two Virginia-based banks, Jefferson National Bank and Central Fidelity Bank.

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11.

In 1997, Wachovia Corporation acquired both 1st United Bancorp and American Bankshares Inc, giving its first entry into Florida.

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12.

In 2000, Wachovia Corporation made its final purchase, which was Republic Security Bank.

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13.

The cards, which would have still been branded as Wachovia Corporation, would have been issued through Bank One's First USA division.

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14.

Wachovia Corporation first began converting systems in the southeast United States where both banks had branches, before moving to First Union's branches in the Northeast, which only had to change their signs to reflect the new company name and logo.

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15.

Wachovia Corporation was ranked number one in customer satisfaction among major banks by the University of Michigan's annual American Customer Satisfaction Index for every year after the merger.

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16.

Between 2001 and 2006, Wachovia Corporation bought several other financial services companies in an attempt to become a national bank and comprehensive financial services company.

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17.

In June 2005, Wachovia Corporation negotiated to purchase monoline credit card company MBNA.

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18.

Wachovia Corporation received $100 million as the result of an agreement Wachovia Corporation predecessor First Union made in 2000 when it sold its credit card portfolio to MBNA.

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19.

In late 2005 Wachovia Corporation announced that it would end its relationship with MBNA and create its own credit card division so that the bank could issue its own Visa cards.

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20.

Westcorp, Western Financial Bank's parent company, WFS Financial Inc and Wachovia Corporation announced a proposed acquisition by Wachovia Corporation in September 2005.

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21.

Wachovia Corporation agreed to purchase Golden West Financial for a little under $25.

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22.

Wachovia Corporation greatly raised its profile in California, where Golden West held $32 billion in deposits and operated 123 branches.

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23.

Some current and former Wachovia Corporation officials said that the merger was agreed to within days, making it impossible to thoroughly vet the World Savings loan portfolio.

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24.

In 2007, after the merger, World Savings, then known as Wachovia Corporation Mortgage began to attract more borrowers by taking a step that some regulators frowned upon, and which the former World Savings management had resisted for years: it allowed borrowers to make monthly payments with an annual interest rate of just 1 percent.

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25.

Analysts said that Wachovia Corporation purchased Golden West at the peak of the US housing boom.

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26.

In early March 2008 Wachovia Corporation began to phase out the AG Edwards brand in favor of a unified Wachovia Corporation Securities.

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27.

Wachovia Corporation, excluding subsidiaries, was the fourth largest bank at the end of 2008.

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28.

Wachovia Corporation had been head of the company since 2000, while it was still known as First Union.

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29.

Under the circumstances, regulators feared that if customers pulled out more money, Wachovia Corporation wouldn't have enough liquidity to meet its obligations.

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30.

From this point on, Citigroup became the source of liquidity allowing Wachovia Corporation to continue to operate until the acquisition was complete.

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31.

Wachovia Corporation expected to continue as a publicly traded company, retaining its retail brokerage arm, Wachovia Corporation Securities and Evergreen mutual funds.

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32.

One financial expert told the Observer that if Wachovia Corporation's shareholders voted the deal down, the OCC could have simply seized Wachovia Corporation and placed it into the receivership of the FDIC, which would then sell it to Citigroup.

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33.

Wachovia Corporation preferred the Wells Fargo deal because it would be worth more than the Citigroup deal and keep all of its businesses intact.

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34.

In total, Wachovia Corporation accepted $142 million in unsigned checks from "companies that made unauthorized withdrawals from thousands of accounts", collecting millions of dollars in fees from them.

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35.

The investigation found that Wachovia Corporation had failed to conduct suitable due diligence, and that it would have discovered the thefts if it had followed normal procedures.

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36.

However, not only is it a "lucrative industry" that is able to charge high fees, but Wachovia Corporation viewed it as a way to gain a foothold in the Hispanic banking market.

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37.

In March 2010, Wachovia Corporation admitted "serious and systemic" violations of the Bank Secrecy Act that allowed Mexican and Colombian drug cartels to launder $378.

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38.

Reports in Bloomberg Businessweek in June 2010 and The Observer in April 2011 shed light on the extent to which Wachovia Corporation went to turn a blind eye, including by ignoring the warnings and suspicious activity reports of its London-based director of anti-money-laundering.

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