Excellent Presentation by Outgoing Wells Fargo CEO

[haha]

Goldman Sachs Financial Services CEO Conference 2007

Richard Kovacevich is retiring at Wells Fargo after an astonishingly successful career. At a Goldman Sachs conference a month or so ago he gave answers to wide ranging questions on banking and the current economy.

He seems unusually frank to me, as well as very helpful in putting current conditions into perspective.

THe first part of the presentaion is Wells focused, after that he moves onto business principles, as well as economic comments. It is fairly long- maybe 50 minutes or so.

I just muted the AFC Championship and multitasked, though I found myself more interested in the talk than the game.

Ha

 

[Moemg]

Well I finally got to listen to it . Very interesting economic comments .Thanks for posting .

 

[haha]

Glad you enjoyed it Moe. One comment really caught my ear- he said the biggest cause of financial distress among American consumers is divorce.

Ha

 

[unclemick]

Well I finally got to listen to it . Very interesting economic comments .Thanks for posting .

Ditto. Three trys but I finally got to listen without getting interrupted.

Thanks.

heh heh heh

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

he said the biggest cause of financial distress among American consumers is divorce.

That was one of the tenets in The Millionaire Next Door. Most millionaires were long married to the same woman and had avoided divorces. Not a lot of single guy millionaires, not a lot of divorced millionaires.

http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f29/book-report-millionaire-next-door-14493.html

 

[clifp]

I also enjoyed the presentation. A couple of things stood out. First how relatively small WFC's mortgage write offs were tens of millions in 67 billion mortgage portfolio.
Second his comment about the ridiculousness of loaning 90-100% LTV with loans that had negative amoritization, and then not even requiring income documentation.

This reinforce my believe that there are plenty of sane bankers in the world, and many of the banks like Wells Fargo are run by them. I definitely feel better about own WFC although I do wish Mr. K was still running the show.