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In a long-awaited split, U.S. Bancorp is spinning off its investment bank,Piper Jaffray, into a separate, publicly traded company.
Other possibilities included a sale, but U.S. Bancorp executives said on aconference call Wednesday, Feb. 19, that a sale was never an option. People familiarwith the situation said that U.S. Bancorp had received several approachesfor the unit, but that talks never progressed very far. No banks were givena chance to look at Piper Jaffray's books, these people said.
The amicable divorce shows that marriages between investment banks and commercial banks do not always end badly, financial institutions groupbankers on Wall Street said.
The move appears to be one of the final chapters in a saga under which large commercial banks are snapping up small, middle-market growth and technologyshops, with mixed results. Bankers pointed to the wipeout of RobertsonStephens, as well as the slow path to anonymity followed by Hambrecht &Quist, now absorbed fully into <J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and Alex. Brown, which...