This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: Wachovia Corp. spent $6.9 billion to acquire A.G. Edwards; and the last thing the banking giant wants is a mass defection of brokers, who have rated higher on some customer satisfaction and broker satisfaction surveys than do Wachovia brokers.
"Whenever you buy a brokerage business, it's difficult to keep all the brokers," says Jaime Peters, who tracks big banks for the independent financial research firm Morningstar. She and other analysts note that A.G. Edwards' broker turnover rate over the years has been one of the lowest in the industry.