Big Al45

Lehman Brothers Take-over: Implications for Financials

The so called "peer group" does not provide a meaningful comparison . Lehman has very little in common with monoline insurers, Business Development Companies, and regional banks that don't have significant off balance sheet exposure. Their asset mix (and risk exposure) is considerably different than that of investment banks like Lehman.

The comparators should be limited to other investment banks and the large money center banks (such as BAC, RY, DB, TD, UBS.)

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.