ksh

Wachovia/Golden West: The 'True Story'

I joined Wachovia as a middle mgr after the merger of GDW so I was able to view from the inside even though I was not actually a part of GDW. I have many years of mortgage banking experience and I want you to know that I've only seen one organization as strong as the GDW legacy team only one other time in my 30+ year career. They were by far the exact type of team that Corporate America can usually only pray for! They were loyal to the brand, believed in what they did and put their customers and corporate profits above all else. I wasn't high enough in management to see that the Wachovia executives botched anything but I'm sure there were some mistakes made; I believe the biggest was the displacement of the the wholesale team. Yes, 25 billion was too much but the return on investment would have been realized within a few years had the real estate values crashed. There was much value in the GDW franchise that could not just be measured by the value of the mortgage portfolio. Wachovia has lost a remarkable team of people. I pray that many will be reassembled again and create the same successful legacy but even better. I learned much from them in the short time I was among their ranks.