The Wells Fargo wagon is a’comin. Who is jumping on?
The offer: We’re going to sell more stock, so we can pay our government loans, so we can give our executives anything they want and pretend like a banking crisis never happened?
I’m not sure why anybody would bite on this pitch. But that’s essentially the deal Wells Fargo announced today.
Anything to keep that Obama guy from calling them “Fat Cats” again.
Click here to read more about Wells Fargo’s offer.
The bank is the last of the first eight banks that received money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program to come up with a plan to pay back the taxpayers. Wells Fargo got $25 billion.
It’s repayment plan involves shifting the risk from the taxpayers to the shareholders, which is a laudable free-market solution. But why would investors willingly line up for this? I know. The market is better now. But it’s not like there are all these sovereign wealth funds that need to choke on more bank stock.
Wells Fargo’s announcement follows Citigroup’s plan to sell stock to get out of government debt.
Wouldn’t it be nice if every troubled company could just sell more stock?
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