Former Wachovia employees have nine lives

The success of Wachovia leaders is galling to some shareholders and employees who suffered in the bank's demise.

"From my perspective, it's a club," said Mark Beck, who led a campaign against the Wells Fargo sale. "They take care of their own."

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Bankers from hobbled firms often resurface elsewhere unless they are directly implicated with wrongdoing or tied to big mistakes, such as Wachovia's purchase of mortgage lender Golden West Financial at the peak of the housing boom, said Miami-based banking consultant Ken Thomas.

"If they didn't come into close proximity to that $25 billion disaster, they have a pretty clean resume," he said.

Former CEO Ken Thompson, who was ousted in June 2008 after leading Wachovia's ill-fated plunge into the mortgage business, joined a private-equity firm and sits on the board of a small North Carolina bank. Bob Steel, who engineered the bank's sale to Wells as the financial crisis flared, is deputy mayor for economic development in New York.

Executives like Steel came in after Wachovia cratered, and recruiters and insiders say the bank had some talented employees who worked at the bank for years.

Wachovia, once the nation's fourth-biggest bank by assets, verged on collapse in September 2008, weighed down by losses tied to toxic mortgage loans and securities. In October, Wells swooped in to buy the bank in a deal initially valued at $7 per share. Two years earlier, Wachovia shares were around $60.

David Carroll, who ran the capital management division at Wachovia, nabbed the most prominent role at Wells, becoming head of wealth, brokerage and retirement services. He reports directly to CEO John Stumpf.

TOO LONG AND TOO PAINFUL

Among those who departed, Cece Stewart, Wachovia's former head of retail and small business banking, is president of the U.S. consumer and commercial bank at Citigroup. One of her former lieutenants, Jon Witter, runs the retail bank at Capital One.

Reggie Davis, former head of Wachovia's Eastern banking group, is president at RBC Bank, the Royal Bank of Canada unit that PNC Financial Services Group agreed to buy earlier this year.