Bargain Hunting
Wachovia Securities appears to be taking advantage of the market slump and the resulting uncertainty in the securities industry to raid rivals for investment banking and research talent.The Wachovia Corp. unit said Wednesday it had hired Stewart Wallace away from J.P. Morgan Securities, a J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. unit, as a managing director and the head of its industrial growth investment banking group.
Mr. Wallace, 41, will work from Charlotte and will report to Kevin Roche, Wachovia Corp.'s head of investment banking.
"Stewart's expertise and proven ability to build a business make him an important leader for this division. He will add sophisticated product and sector knowledge and bring extensive client relationships to our firm," Mr. Roche said in a press release.
Wachovia Securities also has hired a team of analysts from Banc of America Securities to cover the home building and building-product sectors.
Leading the team is Carl Reichardt, who had worked at the Bank of America Corp. unit and its predecessors, including Montgomery Securities of San Francisco, for seven years. He also has worked in the home building industry and was a co-founder of Modern American Home Centers, a manufactured housing retailer.
Mr. Reichardt brings with him two B of A research colleagues, Rich Kwas and Aaron Robinson. They will all be based in San Francisco.
Wachovia Securities also said Wednesday that it has hired Ralph Jean as a senior equity research analyst covering retailers. He is returning to the firm after two years at Chartwell Investment Partners.
A Higher Court
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer told state lawmakers at a hearing in Sacramento last week that he "has a stack of lawsuits five feet high against the federal government."The pile is unlikely to shrink anytime soon.
A legal dispute between Mr. Lockyer and the American Bankers Association over a California law requires credit card issuers to make specific disclosures on customers' minimum payments is coming back to life in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco.
Gail Hillebrand, a senior attorney for the West Coast regional office of the Consumers Union, said that "six or seven major consumer groups" filed an amicus brief in support of Mr. Lockyer on Tuesday.
In December, U.S. District Court Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. found that federal banking laws, including the National Bank Act, preempted the state law, which requires issuers to tell customers how much it will cost to pay off a card balance by making only the minimum required monthly payments.
Mr. Lockyer's office filed an appeal in January.
The ABA, whose brief is due to the court on June 9, was joined by five other trade groups and five credit card banks - Chase Manhattan Bank USA, Citibank South Dakota, First USA Bank, Household Bank, and MBNA America Bank - as plaintiffs.
Showtime
Wachovia Securities is getting into the entertainment business.Well, sort of. It is helping a consortium led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. mount a bid to buy back his family's entertainment properties from Vivendi Universal.
Wachovia confirmed last week that it has agreed to lead a debt financing for a consortium that reportedly would include the New York cable operator Cablevision Systems Corp. The financing could total $9 billion, Reuters reported Tuesday.
Last month Vivendi announced plans to sell its Vivendi Universal Entertainment as a whole or in pieces to cut its debts and concentrate on telecommunications. Mr. Bronfman, the former Seagram Co. Ltd. chief executive who is now a Vivendi vice chairman, told the French-American company's chairman he plans to bid for the whole unit.
But he may need $15 billion or more to pull off the deal, according to analysts, and he would be bidding against the oil billionaire Marvin Davis, as well as a slew of others who want pieces of the unit.
Mr. Bronfman sold the entertainment business to Vivendi in 2000 for $34 billion of Vivendi shares, whose value later plummeted.
