Unlocking Shareholder Value in Banking

I’ll be a dick and say there is no value when the banks are using tax payer money to make free money. Add in lower M&A, trading, general lending profits, and potential derivative bombs and you have divisions that are undervalued, but not whole entities. I will only change my mind when there is complete transparency and the Eron style accounting has gone away. That’s my two cents.

“Seventeen years ago fund manager Michael F. Price spurred the merger of Chase Manhattan Corp. and Chemical Banking Corp., creating what was then the biggest U.S. bank and laying the foundation for JPMorgan (JPM) Chase & Co.

Now he has a new message: It’s time to break up.

The stocks of five of the six biggest U.S. banks — JPMorgan,Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Citigroup Inc. (C), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) — are languishing at or below tangible book value. That means the pieces are worth more than the whole, Price said.”

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