naked capitalism

The statistics on retail brokers at banks are a bit dated, since they don’t reflect the fact that Merrill, aka The Thundering Herd, is soon to be part of Bank of America (I am not certain whether the deal has actually closed). Nevertheless, the fact that WaMu has a meaningful broker-dealer operation was seldom mentioned in discussions of the bank’s’ plight, but I doubt it was lost on JP Morgan.

From Investment News:

Accounting for roughly 10% of the nation’s retail-securities business done at banks, JPMorgan Chase & Co. is set to become even more dominant in that segment once it completes its $1.9 billion takeover of Washington Mutual Inc.
WaMu Investments Inc., the Irvine, Calif.-based broker-dealer of the Seattle-based bank holding company, employed 460 Series 7-licensed brokers, 535 Series 6-licensed platform representatives, 207 sales assistants and 36 managers at the end of last year, according to Scott Stathis, managing director at, a research firm based in Windsor, Conn., that specializes in the securities and insurance business of banks.

JPMorgan Chase has 2,000 Series 7-licensed reps and 10,000 Series 6 reps, he said.

“WaMu accounts for about 5% of bank brokerage,” said Kenneth Kehrer, a principal with Kehrer-LIMRA.

“The two banks do comparable kinds of business, mostly mutual funds.”