We were just perusing the Vault.com IB message boards and buried under the pile of questions about internships, SAT scores and whether one can get a job at Carlyle as a managing director straight out of high school if one "knows someone" is a fairly extensive back-and-forth about what JPMorgan's next acquisition will be. The guesses revolve mostly around retail expansion, though someone throws in the Morgan Stanley canard for good measure.
Some of the names floated:
SunTrust (the usual name floated)
Wachovia (ditto)
USB (west coast expansion is attractive, but Grundhofers probably wouldn't sell)
PNC (nice east coast footprint but not a big enough deal for Dimon's ego),
Wells Fargo (deposit limit problems)
Washington Mutual (possible deposit limit problems, S&L component that complicates things)
Someone points out that Dimon's ostensible financial superstore strategy is exactly what Citi seems to be moving away from (see Legg Mason), which is ironic, unless Dimon's logic is that he can do Citi better than Citi does Citi. All we know is that Dimon doesn't have much of a story right now and he needs one. (And we need more material, so we're secretly hoping for that dark horse MS merger.)
Posted by Anonymous Vault Message Board User, Apr 26, 2006 5:52PM
Are you really citing the Vault IB message board as a source of information. You realize that it is dominated by college kids ranting and raving about rumors they've heard from other members on the vault message boards. The only reason I continue to read Dealbreaker is to see how pathetic this site is becoming day by day.