Capital One to Buy North Fork, Join Top 10 U.S. Banks

[shugah]

Capital One to Buy North Fork, Join Top 10 U.S. Banks

March 13 (Bloomberg) -- Capital One Financial Corp., the fourth-largest issuer of Visa and MasterCards, will buy North Fork Bancorp for $14.6 billion, almost doubling the company's deposits and giving it more than 50 million customer accounts.

~snip~

The acquisition will increase Capital One's deposits to more than $84 billion and boost its assets to about $146 billion, ranking ahead of Cleveland-based National City Corp., the eighth-biggest U.S. bank as of Dec. 31. Chief Executive Officer Richard Fairbank is making his biggest purchase four months after completing the $4.8 billion takeover of New Orleans-based Hibernia Corp.

~snip~

Capital One acquired Hibernia to expand beyond credit cards and reduce its cost of funding by gaining a base of deposits. North Fork will give the company more than 655 branches in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Louisiana, and Texas, up from almost none before the Hibernia deal.

Capital One's expansion in banking follows a slowdown in credit-card borrowing. The average credit-card debt of households with at least one card rose 2.2 percent a year from 2003 to 2005, down from an average 8.6 percent a year between 1997 and 2002. Capital One, known for its ``what's in your wallet'' advertising campaign, hired comedian David Spade to help draw customers to its credit cards.

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a.1x6c_VFbrY&refer=news_index

[AndyA]

1. So much for competition keeping things competitive

The bigger just keep getting bigger and bigger and BIGGER. No way a competitive market is going to keep things fair and affordable for consumers, because the competition just gets bought up.

I think banks are getting too big, and have too much control, over government. Look at the interest rates they're charging. Gouging consumers is the word.

AT&T is broken up, and now it's all back together again. Why did we bother to break it up in the first place?

I do find some satisfaction that the new bankruptcy laws, despite the millions spent on lobbying to get them, aren't helping the banks and credit card companies the way they thought they would. :rofl: