Wachovia
Wachovia was a diversified financial services company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Before its acquisition by Wells Fargo and Company in 2008, Wachovia was the fourth-largest bank holding company in the United States, based on total assets. Wachovia provided a broad range of banking, asset management, wealth management, and corporate and investment banking products and services. At its height, it was one of the largest providers of financial services in the United States, operating financial centers in 21 states and Washington, D.C., with locations from Connecticut to Florida and west to California. Wachovia provided global services through more than 40 offices around the world.
Wachovia
After Steel took over, he insisted that Wachovia would stay independent. However, its stock price plunged 27 percent on September 26 due to the seizure of Washington Mutual the previous night. On the same day, several businesses and institutional depositors withdrew money from their accounts in order to drop their balances below the $100,000 insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) – an event known in banking circles as a "silent run." Ultimately, Wachovia lost a total of $5 billion in deposits that day—about one percent of the bank's total deposits. The large outflow of deposits attracted the attention of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks. Federal regulators pressured Wachovia to put itself up for sale over the weekend. Had Wachovia failed, it would have been a severe drain on the FDIC's insurance fund due to its size (it operated one of the largest branch networks on the East Coast).