After being bailed out by American taxpayers, American banks looked at how they could quickly pay back the funds and limit the interference the government would have in their companies. To that end, Citigroup (NYSE:C), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC) and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) sold off large numbers of shares to make that a reality, leading the the three giant banks to be among the top five share offerings in 2009 among U.S. companies.
Citigroup generated the most income, raising an additional $21.1 billion, with Bank of America right behind them, raising $19.2 billion. Wells Fargo was third among the large banks, raising $12.2 billion to pay off the TARP funds it was forced to receive.
Bank of America and Wells Fargo were particularly concerned about diluting the shares of the company through the sales, but the other choice would have been to continue to be under the government thumb for pay and bonuses, which would have limited their ability to attract quality people to work for them, and to retain those they had.
Three of the top U.S. stock offerings in history took place in December 2009, with Citigroup surpassing the $19.7 billion the former leading total of Visa when they initially went public in March 2008. Other statistical sources differ slightly with these totals (for the top five), but all conclude they’re among the top deals in U.S history.
For all of 2009, banks generated close to 50 percent of all stock sales of companies which had already been public.
Underwriting for 2009 increase by 38 percent to $7 trillion, said Dealogic, and underwriting fees increased by a dramatic 51 percent to $42.1 billion for the year.
