[7] The company's corporate and institutional capital markets and investment banking groups operated under the Wachovia Securities brand, while its asset management group operated under the Evergreen Investments brand until 2010, when the Evergreen fund family merged with Wells Fargo Advantage Funds, and institutional and high-net-worth products merged with Wells Capital Management and its affiliates.

[4] When Moravian settlers arrived in Bethabara, North Carolina, in 1753, they gave this name to the land they acquired, because it resembled the Wachau valley along the Danube River.

By the 1990s, it had grown into a Southern regional powerhouse in a strategy mirroring its longtime rival on Tryon Street in Charlotte, NCNB (later NationsBank and now Bank of America).

Wachovia grew to become one of the largest banks in the Southeast partly on the strength of its accounts from the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which was also headquartered in Winston-Salem.

However, as an important part of the merger, the merged bank took Wachovia's name and stock ticker symbol; despite First Union technically being the surviving identity and acquiring party.

[21] Both banks increased their offers for Wachovia, took out newspaper ads, mailed letters to shareholders, and initiated court battles to challenge each other's takeover bids.

They have also released new merchandise such as t-shirts, and provided other things such as retractable keychains, cups, and coffee mugs to show the success during 2001 to its acquisition by Wells Fargo.

The business was a small savings and loan in the San Francisco Bay area when it was purchased in 1963 for $4 million by Herbert and Marion Sandler.

Some current and former Wachovia officials said that the merger was agreed to within days, making it impossible to thoroughly vet the World Savings loan portfolio.

frowned upon, and which the former World Savings management had resisted for years: it allowed borrowers to make monthly payments with an annual interest rate of just 1 percent.

While Wachovia Mortgage continued to scrutinize borrowers' ability to manage increased payments, the move to rock-bottom rates lured customers whose financial reliability was more difficult to verify.

In 2009 New York Times reporter Floyd Norris called World Savings a "ticking timebomb" that created "zombie homeowners".

[35] While Wachovia Chairman and CEO G. Kennedy "Ken" Thompson had described Golden West as a "crown jewel",[36] investors did not react positively to the deal.

[37] On May 31, 2007, Wachovia announced plans to purchase A. G. Edwards for $6.8 billion to create the United States' second largest retail brokerage firm.

On July 9, 2008, Wachovia hired Treasury Undersecretary Bob Steel as chief executive in hopes that his experience would lead the company out of its difficulties.

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).

However, several federal regulators, led by New York Fed President Tim Geithner, felt such a course would be politically unjustifiable so soon after WaMu's seizure.

[49] After a round of mediation between Geithner and Bair, the FDIC declared that Wachovia was "systemically important" to the health of the economy, and thus could not be allowed to fail.

[53][55] Citigroup intended to sell ten billion dollars of new stock on the open market to recapitalize its purchased banking operations.

Also, several experts in corporate dealmaking told The Charlotte Observer that such a strategy is very risky since federal regulators helped broker the deal.

Also, there is far less overlap between the banks, as Wells Fargo is dominant in the West and Midwest compared to the redundant footprint of Wachovia and Citibank along the East Coast.

That agreement states in part that until October 6, 2008 "Wachovia shall not, and shall not permit any of its subsidiaries or any of its or their respective officers, directors, [...] to [...] take any action to facilitate or encourage the submission of any Acquisition Proposal.".

[64] Citigroup may have been pressured by regulators to back out of the deal; Bair endorsed Wells Fargo's bid because it removed the FDIC from the picture.

In filings unsealed two days before the merger approval in a New York federal court, Citigroup argued that its own deal was better for U.S. taxpayers and Wachovia shareholders.

[67] In September 2008, the Internal Revenue Service issued a notice providing tax breaks to companies that acquire troubled banks.

Vice Chairman Bill Thomas of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission indicated that these tax breaks may have been a factor in Wells Fargo's decision to purchase Wachovia.

According to Pat Meehan, a U.S. attorney for Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Wachovia received "thousands of warnings that it was processing fraudulent checks, but ignored them".

[70] In April 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors had initiated a probe into Wachovia and other U.S. banks for aiding drug money laundering by Mexican and Colombian money-transfer companies, also known as casas de cambio.

These companies help Mexican immigrants in the United States send remittances back to family in Mexico, but it is widely known that they also present a significant money-laundering risk.

[72] Wachovia negotiated a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department to resolve criminal charges for willfully failing to set up an effective anti-money-laundering program.