prescient11

An Ameritrade-E*Trade Merger? Not as Crazy as It Sounds

One other point, due to the TARP program, an acquiring company would be able to pull Etrade's losses out and use them as a tax credit for the next couple of years. Thus, Etrade's expected future mortgage losses ARE A WASH because the acquirer would just be paying that in taxes anyway.

So they can acquire Etrade without worrying about mortgage losses. Further, Etrade has enough cash on hand at the bank $1.8B and at the parent $700M to pay off almost ALL OF THEIR DEBT.

So do the analysis, what is a debt free, no loss Etrade worth? It's got to be near $15 at a minimum. If AMTD could pull it off near $10 it would be a tremendous steal.

Then they might have a platform that runs without crashing all the damn time.