M&T's Wilmers: The good banker
Meant to blog this earlier. Joe Nocera sends a well-deserved Valentine to M&T Banks Robert Wilmers:
On the other hand, it didn’t exactly surprise him [Wilmers]. In the run-up to the financial crisis, the giant national banks — which he viewed as a distinct species from the typical American bank — had done things that deserved condemnation. And, he added, “They are still doing things that I don’t think are very good.”Such as? “It has become a virtual casino,” he replied. “To me, banks exist for people to keep their liquid income, and also to finance trade and commerce.” Yet the six largest holding companies, which made a combined $75 billion last year, had $56 billion in trading revenues. “If you assume, as I do, that trading revenues go straight to the bottom line, that means that trading, not lending, is how they make most of their money,” he said.
From my December 2008 column on M&T:
Meet the new American lender. M&T Bank Corp., which said yesterday that it will buy Baltimore's Provident Bankshares, will typify U.S. finance in the next few years.Big. Based somewhere else. But something that looks like an old-fashioned bank, with branch offices and lollipops next to the teller. FDIC-insured.No investment banking division. No Masters of the Universe deal makers. No 30 dollars borrowed for every one dollar of capital. A lineup that recently would have seemed terribly dull for consumers as well as shareholders now looks very attractive. At the end of this cataclysmic year, tradition and safety are the most exciting things of all.
