Providian Financial Corporation
 |
|
| Acquired; formerly Public (NYSE: PVN) | |
| Industry | Finance and Insurance |
| Founded | 1997 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
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Key people
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Joseph W. Saunders, Chairman, President, & CEO Anthony F. Vuoto, Vice Chairman & CFO Warren Wilcox, Vice Chairman of Planning and Marketing |
| Products | Financial Services |
| Revenue | $2.6 billion USD (2004) |
|
Number of employees
|
3,500 |
| Parent |
Washington Mutual Inc (at time of acquisition) JPMorgan Chase (since 2008) |
Providian Financial Corporation was one of the leading credit card issuers in the United States when it was sold to Washington Mutual for approximately US$6.5 billion in October 2005. Providian was headquartered in San Francisco, California, and had more than 10 million card holders at the time of its sale. Washington Mutual, Inc., continued to run the company as a wholly owned subsidiary, out of its San Francisco headquarters. At its peak, the company employed approximately 13,000 people nationwide. Providian had significant operations in California, New Hampshire, and Texas.
In 1981, Parker Pen acquired two banks to start a credit card company by the name of First Deposit, based in San Francisco. In 1984, First Deposit was sold to the Kentucky insurance company Capital Holding, later renamed Providian. When Providian's insurance operations were acquired by Aegon, Providian's credit card business was spun off as a separate company.
Providian was a company that sold credit in the "subprime" market. Providian provided credit cards primarily to the lowest income groups in the U.S. at high interest rates. The annual percentage rates (APR) charged by Providian were as high as 29.9 percent.
In a March 1999 memorandum published by the San Francisco Chronicle, the founder of the company, Andrew Kahr, asked company executives about its customers: "Is any bit of food too small to grab when you're starving and when there is nothing else in sight? The trick is charging a lot, repeatedly, for small doses of instrumental [sic]credit." Many critics contended that the extended credit makes the borrower poorer than before the credit was extended. Having the opposite effect on officers and directors of the company, making them conspicuously wealthier. David Alvarez, former president of the integrated-card unit, made a US$12.2 million profit selling his stock before the company disclosed that it was in deep trouble. Larry Thompson sold all his stock having a value of approximately US$4.7 million following his confirmation hearing and a short time before Providian's financial problems became public information and the stock price plummeted.
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Wikipedia