Big Al45

BB&T-Colonial Deal Illustrates It's the Big Bank Chiefs Who Win Again

What are the details of the loss sharing agreement with the FDIC regarding CNB's assets?? This should information should be disclosed in the prospectus for BBT's secondary offering, but, somehow I doubt that it will be.

The $15 Billion in CNB "assets" covered by the loss share agreement are probably worth $8 Billion, at most. So, how much of the $7 Billion loss will BB&T shareholders have to take?

I imagine BBT's share of the loss will be a whole lot more than the 750 million BBT is raising though this secondary offering.

This deal has a certain stench do it - like the BOA - Merrill shotgun marriage. Did Sheila pull a Paulson and threaten to fire King?

Messages from the Large Regional Banks

Agree with dave mckay.

If you can afford to pay off your balance each month, you don't really need the credit card.

So, if the credit card issuers start assessing monthly fees, the users will cancel their credit cards and pay with debit cards or checks.

Are TARP Participants Safe Investments?

And don't forget the CDS boulder that's hanging over the entire financial system. The FED's refusal to force existing derivatives onto a publically traded platform is criminal.

Personally, I don't think any bank is safe except maybe Goldman Sachs. Since they run the FED, they will be the last to fail.

Opportunity in the Paulson Backlash

The top three criteria for getting bailout money are

(1) the amount of money donated to the Republican party by the applicant's executives

(2) The number of bank executives that went to college and/or private school with the members of the evaluation committee

(3) Whether Goldman Sachs' trading desk is long or short on the applicant's stock.

Only 77 more stealing days left until the new administration takes over.

These 32 Commercial Banks and Thrifts May See the Dung Hit the Fan

Don't know enough about most of the banks cited in your article, but think you are right about PNC.

Their financials aren't great and you can't trust them anyway. PNC caught pulling an Enron move about 5 years ago - creating an off balance sheet entity to hide factoring losses.

Perhaps most telling - the COO's 2008 bonus calculation (see pages 48 and 49 of the 2008 proxy). Demchack will get 100% of his bonus even if PNC's Asset Liability Management unit's performance is 25 basis points lower than its peers. In 2007, payment of the bonus required ALM to perform at the same level as its peers.

As soon as I read the proxy, I dumped the stock (at $68) and haven't looked back.