From Bloomberg: Wells Fargo May Face Doubt on Wisdom of Wachovia Deal Coming in right on schedule for Wells Fargo's earnings report later this week. Will Wells' earnings report read like a Groundhog Day-version of Bank of America's? Will it soften the blow and lower expections for Wells? See BofA's template after it aquired Countrywide and then Merrill Lynch. It goes something like this...
(The hopefully-too-big-to-fail-company) will report (some-"amazingly"-big-number) percent decline in fourth-quarter profit to (some-small-number-that-will-freak-out-analysts-and-investors). That doesn’t include (the-latest-toxic-company-swallowed) , which it acquired (on-purpose-for-the-postTARP-world) .
With foreclosures at a record and the jobless rate at a 16-year high, analysts have speculated (the-we're-praying-for-more goverment-money-company) will need to raise (a-HUGE-amount) of cash and cut its dividend to (the-lowest-its-shareholders-will-tolerate-without-pulling-out-altogether) to cover ($ enormous-dollar-amount-for-the-short-term) from (the-acquired-company-saddled-with-gobs-of-debt).
The short read on Wells' will be: We missed! Sorry! Who knew! It's all Wachovia's fault!
What they don't say...Wells went into WB to: 1) paper over their own losses; 2) knew WB losses would be massive; 3) added WB to make Wells too big to fail; and 4) this is only the beginning of the capital injections that Wells will need.
Yes, I am extremely cynical.
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