ZAY Blog

In front of me is a copy of the shareholder’s prospectus on the Wachovia and Wells Fargo merger.

Put all the excitement aside (since this is the first time I am voting as a shareholder for a legal entity, although practically I do not hold any stock of Wachovia Corp as this point although I held an insignificant portion of Wachovia Corp common shares as of the recording date), I can not help to wondering whether there is any arbitrage opportunity arises here.

On the prospectus, it was stated that the merger was publicly announced on the 3 October, 2008 and the criteria of the merger is that each of the Wachovia common stock will be converted into 0.1991 of a share of Wells Fargo common stock. Using the law of one price, or the no-arbitrage principle, one should expect the common shares of Wachovia to be traded at 0.1991 times of the Wells Fargo stock. However, a simple Excel spreadsheet would reveal that is not the case.

The following table summarized the daily closing price of Wachovia Corp. (NYSE: WB) relative to the daily closing price of Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) from 2 October, 2008 to 12 December, 2008:

Average: 0.18468

St Dev: 0.018232

Count: 52

>0.1991:1

=0.1991:0

<0.1991:51

In the 52 trading days of data available, there is only one day that the share price of Wachovia Corp traded above 0.1991 times of that of Wells Fargo, and the average is slightly below 0.1991, at around 0.1846.

In the textbook, we learnt that in this case, the shares of Wells Fargo is overvalued and the shares of Wachovia Corp is undervalued and we should go short on WFC and long on WB.

However, why such “arbitrage” opportunity has existed for so long if, in theory, the market is efficient enough (the market in reality is a combination of semi-strong efficient and weakly efficient) to balance the demand and supply curve?

In my opinion, there are 2 major issues here
1. The uncertainty of merger. Although almost all major shareholders of Wachovia Corp have mostly accepted the fate of the bank, there are still shareholders who are contending for the merger, claiming that the merger has significantly undervalued the firm. It is very unlikely, but still possible, that such lawsuits will cause the merger to fail.

2. The volatility in the stock market: Although the shareholder’s meeting is going to take place on December 23, 2008, the merger is not expected to be completed  on that day. As a result, there may still be volatility in the share prices of both WFC and WB, which could affect the implied values of the shares.

Note that the market was able to quickly absorb the information and the ratio was relatively stable after the initial fluctuation, indicating the market is still fairly efficient despite that there was significant arbitrage opportunity initially even after the announcement was made to public.

However, it was also noted that out of those 52 days, in 44 days both shares went up and down together, hence it is safe to say that the market has indeed absorbed the information of the merger and is currently considering the two corporations as a pair rather than two unrelated stocks. When comparing to S&P 500 index (which is the proxy for the market portfolio), WB was traded with the movement of the market in only 27 out of the 52 days, indicating that is quite independent of the market movement.

Well, not quite, there is still hope that the senate would bring it back to live some times later this week.

However, the collapse of Wachovia, the bank that could be saved if the loan programs have approved earlier, as well as the plunge of the major index around the world, clearly indicated that this is an issue that can not be waited…

How long will the politicians in Parliament Hill figure out that Americans do need to save Wall Street?

I am not saying the traders in Wall Street have done the right thing to use the money that they are not prepared to pay back, however, what is right and what is wrong no longer matters, because Wall Street is not only a financial hub of the world, it is, more importantly, the dominant factor of the US economy. If Wall Street fails, every ordinary American citizens would be affected, not just the traders or the investment bank executives.

Sometimes, I am wondering if democracy is really a great idea in time of crisis, because it is difficult to explain to every single individual (or even the majority) of the impact of certain things, not because general public are ignorant by any means, but rather we are specialize in different things.

For example, it is difficult to convince a farmer whose sole interest is to be able to sell the cattle he has raised that 2000 dollars from his tax money has to be given to the financial market.

He is probably really good with raising cattle, far better than the investment bankers could do, but that does not mean he could be educated enough to see the entire economy.

On the other hand, we can see that in the current milk-poisoning crisis, the Chinese government is spending taxpayers money to compensate the lose of the diary farmers.

This may be a somewhat authoritarian in the eyes of Americans, since every single Chinese citizen (or those who pay tax to the Chinese government at least) is basically paying for something that they have nothing to do with.

However, in this case, by ensuring the survival of the Chinese diary farmers, China has shown to the world that it is acting more responsibly, as well as more maturely, in time of crisis.

Which is very different from the irresponsible manner that the congressmen and congresswomen is showing ahead of the elections.

I was really thrilled to hear that the senate has finally approved the package to save the financial world.

I am not sure how much the collapse of Washington Mutual would have made those senators feel that they finally need to do some work rather than arguing all over the place to maximize their political profit, but the fact that the agreement was reached on Saturday midnight is really an assuring fact to know.

However, what we have seen so far is a really disappointing picture in the Asian market, with the financial stocks continue to decline.

Why is that so?

Because people no longer have any confidence in the US economy.

Sadly speaking, the financial market in US would not stop to deteriorate just  because of the 700 billion. In fact, some analysts claimed that the market needs as much as 5 trillion dollars in order to go through the current mess without getting hurt too much. Unfortunately, the fact that the rest of the world is reluctant in joining the US in saving the financial market means that it is very unlikely the government will be able to raise the fund.

On the other hand, even within the US government, as election approaches, no one seems to have that much interest in asking each US citizen to pay more than 2000 dollars to save the mistakes made by the Wall Street traders. Instead, they have promised tax reduction, which would means that the government would not be able to provide too much to save Wall Street.

However, what should we expect when the market opens tomorrow morning?

First, I think Wachovia is saved for now, after being treated as the next victim after Washington Mutual, therefore, we should see some good news for WB to bring the highly undervalued stock back a little.

Second news should be from the currency market, where we should see some advance in the US dollars as people are now confident that the wound would not be as large. On the other hand, the LIBOR and treasury should be a little lower as the financial institutions (even those non-US companies with large business presence in US) find themselves a little easier to borrow money to solve their liquidity headaches.

Let’s hope that this 700 billion dollars would really be able to give the investors some confidence, because…well, hope is all we have.