Wells Fargo to repay $25 billion in TARP funds

[babylonsister]

Wells Fargo to repay $25 billion in TARP funds

By Christina Rexrode | The Charlotte Observer


Wells Fargo, eager to avoid being the biggest bank still holding bailout money, announced Monday evening that it plans to pay back its $25 billion in government loans.

The San Francisco bank, which bought Charlotte's Wachovia Corp. last year, made the announcement about 12 hours after Citigroup announced its own plan for repaying money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Bank of America paid back its government loan late last week, and many peer banks paid their bills this summer.

Wells said it would repay its TARP loan after raising $10.4 billion from the markets. It expects to raise another $1.5 billion by selling certain assets next year, with approval from the Federal Reserve. It will raise another $1.35 billion by issuing stock to employee retirement plans and giving stock awards instead of cash to "certain Wells Fargo team members."

Dick Kovacevich, Wells' chairman and former chief executive officer, was one of the industry's most outspoken critics of TARP since it was introduced in October 2008. But Monday evening, Wells CEO John Stumpf spoke favorably of the program, issuing a statement saying that "TARP stabilized our country's financial system when confidence in financial markets around the world was being tested unlike any other period in our history."

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/80644.html

[DCBob]

1. I wish someone would dig up all those brash bold ignorant statements from the rightwingnuts....

and the "expert" economists about how the bank bailouts would fail and we wouldn't see a dime repaid.