Archive for the ‘Charlotte’ tag
30th Anniversary Heroes Convention, Charlotte Convention Center: 24 June 2012 1 comment
Wachovia, Everywhere: September 2011 7 comments
The weekend of September 17 2011, all of Columbia's Wachovia locations unveiled their new Wells Fargo signs and the transition which had been forgone since the 2008 merger/rescue was complete.
In reading the Wikipedia entry for Wachovia, I learned a number of things including the fact that "Wachovia" is an old German/Moravian term for the area of North Carolina including Winston-Salem and that Wachovia, like many banks, has a complicated history.
The short version is that the entity that became known as Wachovia started in the Winston-Salem area, eventually bought First Atlanta and became a regional power with headquaters in both Atlanta and Winston-Salem.
In 2001 Wachovia merged with First Union, a bank with its own complicated history. Although technically First Union was the entity which survived, the new company took the Wachovia name and went on an acquisitions spree.
One of these acquisitions was the mortgage firm Golden West which proved to be a poison pill, cratering within Wachovia as the housing bubble burst. This put Wachovia in the position of needing more cash just exactly at the time Washington Mutual failed and dried up all investment cash for banks. I'm not entirely sure I understand what happened next, but the government intervened and tied Wachovia up with Citigroup, a pairing that somehow unravelled when Wells Fargo entered the picture and acquired Wachovia instead.
Or in the end, it could simply be that Wachovia had the bad fortune never to be written into a beloved Broadway show...