WRRB/Telegram District City Council Forum 10/18
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This forum is for all district council candidates; all candidates are here
today. Format: 14 total questions, 4 questions across districts (for all
candida...
6 months ago
5 comments:
I always wondered why they had 2 banks downtown. If I recall, that one was a WCIS, where the other was a Mechanics. Bank of Boston -> BankBoston -> Fleet bought them both around the same time.
Believe it or not, downtown Worcester was once a haven for bank headquarters: WCIS , Mechanics Bank, People's Bank, Home Federal Saving's Bank , Guarantee Bank & Worcester County National Bank... lots of well paid, educated people working downtown in those banks, not to mention, plenty of lasses for Paulie... in any event, once the big banks came in and bought them all out...all those jobs disappeared...and the economic boost they gave downtown merchants went with that. This also applies to the downtown insurance companies, too (think Paul Revere)
Worcester went from being a bank/insurance headquarters city to a "branch office" i.e. skeleton staffs... all the IT, accounting, senior management, HR, etc jobs...all gone...and all the small, local businesses that supported the corporate headquartered banks all suffered too.
Just a quick history lesson.
Harry Tembenis
Worcester,MA
PS
People's Bank & WCIS used to get write ups in the Wall Street Journal for being so well run.
Right now we still have Commerce HQ downtown but I am worried that with all the name fight problems that Commerce is ripe for a buy-out.
Banking consolidation is on hold right now until the price of bank stocks which have been hammered in the last 8 months comes back.
Bank America alone is off 33% from its highs last summer...but they would not acquire any more banks ....at least not in the USA
Citibank........may even get busted up into pieces and sold off.
THe banking consolidation will eventually return.........but it's a few years away.....computer centric business like banks & insurance co's are always ripe for consolidation...........frankly, I am surprised that Hanover (a.k.a. State Mutual/ Allmerica) is still standing and hasnt been gobbled up yet. They brought in a Fidelity bigwig back in the mid 90's to dress the place up to be sold......but he botched the job royally with his annuities that were sold to guarantee a rate of return of about 8% which worked fine until the staock market bust of 2000-2001. They got back on their feet eventually........I still see the place as ripe to be gobbled up like Hancock was a few years and now Commerce Ins is
Jahn:
I can not wait to get my $20 from you
Bill
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