This week, Wachovia goes coast to coast

SAN FRANCISCO -- Inside a World Savings branch here last week, a smattering of customers chatted quietly with tellers and financial specialists. The calm scene belied busy preparations for this week's conversion into a full Wachovia branch.

In a back room, three tellers huddled over computer monitors, practicing new systems that will debut Friday. And pointing down the hallway, financial center manager Beth Pun apologized for an unusual clutter of boxes containing old World forms.

Starting Thursday, the Charlotte bank will change over computer systems and reveal new signs at more than 200 branches from California to Illinois, a key step in last year's acquisition of World parent Golden West Financial. At stake is the bank's push to become a coast-to-coast institution that can thrive in unfamiliar turf three time zones away.

"We are getting anxious," said Pun, an 18-year World veteran.

"But we have been preparing for months," Pun said.

Last October, Wachovia bought California-based Golden West for $24 billion, giving the nation's fourth biggest bank its first major retail banking foothold on the West Coast. In its biggest deal ever, the bank acquired a company that for decades made its name providing specialty mortgages while offering mostly staid certificates of deposit in its World Savings branches.

Wachovia's stock price has taken a beating as investors fretted about the addition of large mortgage operations during a national housing slump. Now the bank can spotlight the retail banking business it hopes to reap in fast-growing states such as California.

The bank already has had success selling free checking accounts at former World branches. And it's providing World's trademark adjustable rate mortgages in Wachovia bank branches back East.

But until blue-and-green Wachovia logos -- now hidden by temporary World Savings banners -- appear outside branches, the N.C. interloper can't truly declare itself a West Coast player. "I think until you do that, for some people we're not here," said Pete Jones, who heads up Wachovia's western region.

Wachovia faces plenty of challenges in its westward expansion. Branch conversions always stir worries about computer glitches and disgruntled customers. And Wachovia will vie with well-entrenched competition.

Charlotte rival Bank of America Corp. is the biggest bank in California with nearly 1,000 branches, followed by West Coast stalwart Wells Fargo & Co. with nearly as many. By year end, Wachovia expects to have about 160 branches in the state, counting World locations, another small acquisition and newly built branches.

Bank of America's California president, Janet Lamkin, said she can see why other banks want to enter one of the country's most attractive markets but isn't too focused on the new competition. "We're really comfortable with the scale we have in the state and our ability to serve customers," she said.

Careful conversion

Commercial banking is a steady but slow-growth business. That's why Wachovia bought Golden West to enter population hot spots where it can pitch more checking accounts, credit cards, mortgages and wealth management services.Perhaps symbolic of Wachovia's upstart image in the state, it has adopted Golden West's headquarters in Oakland, San Francisco's less glitzy East Bay neighbor. Don't feel too sorry for the employees there, though -- the company's silver-sheened building sits next to a lush green park and offers views of the Oakland hills and glistening Lake Merritt.

From here, transplanted executives have been plotting the branch conversion as well as hiring new bankers to provide small business and private banking services that Golden West didn't offer. They have become a chummy group, many of them having scouted the same homes during their house hunts.