Woke up this morning to squack box CNBC news, as I usually do, and I thought I hadn’t heard correctly: all week we’d been getting the news about Citigroup’s acquisition, with government assistance, of Wachovia, and this morning, it’s all undone and Wells Fargo is picking it up, without any government assistance. I remember when mergers and acquisitions of such magnitude would take months, and here, with lightning speed, these huge corporations are moving into each other’s arms.
It was rumored before the Citi takeover, that Wells Fargo was looking at the deal and was probably working behind the scenes to make the offer. Most analysts agree that Wells Fargo is probably the strongest and best managed of all the major banks, or what’s left of them. The market seems to agree: Citigroup is trading down, Wachovia and Wells Fargo is trading up, so it looks like a great deal for the latter 2 and their respective shareholders.