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.”
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Is the Derivatives King trying to become “too big to fail”?
Somehow Evil Kinevil buying a transportation company doesn’t sound like a good investment
Anonymous of 6:58 pm EST: Here’s the Wikipedia definition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broker-dealer
“A broker-dealer is a company that trades securities for customers as well as for its own account. In the United States, a broker-dealer has to be registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. When executing trade orders on behalf of a customer, the institution is said to be acting as a broker. When executing trades for its own account, the institution is said to be acting as a dealer. Securities bought from clients or other firms in the capacity of dealer may be sold to clients or other firms acting again in the capacity of dealer, or they may become a part of the firm’s holdings.”
I read Bernie Sanders to say, in paraphrase: A finance entity too big to fail is too big to exist.
To “Big to Fall” equals Freddie/Fannie and AIG. Everything else is foder and should be, Paulson/Bernanke “let’s make a deal” or not.
Earl
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Good analysis.
ignore credit scores
give everyone homes
– like musical chairs
to deny a mortgage
must be due to racism
.