Is Wells buying back the warrants?
Didn't they do that before?
Management has board authorization to buy back $450M of tarp warrants, which means they could in theory buy back all the warrants at these prices. But after the initial auction buyback of 70M of the 110M total warrants, their purchases have been tapering off:
q3/10: 536k
q4/10: 114k
q1/11: 0
q2/11: 0
q3/11: 167k
q4/11: 98k
q1/12: 0
q2/12: 35k
So 725k would represent a significant increase from what they have been doing lately.
I guess we'll find out in the 2012 10k if it was them or not.
Does look very weird on a chart. I wonder if Wells (or anyone) negotiated a private purchase, would it show up on the volume chart like this once the transaction is registered?