The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

2. Dethroned

Longtime Sovereign Bancorp (SOV Quote) chief Jay Sidhu finally saw the writing on the wall this week.

Sidhu stepped down from the Philadelphia-based thrift early Wednesday. Though a company press release says he resigned "for family health-related reasons," news reports suggest directors gave Sidhu a helpful shove.

The Wall Street Journal reported last Friday that directors were demanding Sidhu's removal, citing the stock's poor recent performance -- not to mention his obvious disdain for shareholders.

What rankled many one-time Sovereign fans was a deal Sidhu railroaded through last year. He sold a big stake in Sovereign to Spain's Santander (STD Quote) and used the proceeds to buy a New York community bank. Many investors opposed the deals, but that didn't matter, since Sidhu saw to it that the transactions weren't subject to shareholder approval.

Just a month earlier, Sidhu had told analysts at a Lehman Brothers conference, "We consider that an absolute wasting of time to be looking at acquisitions."

Sidhu rarely considered it a waste of time to talk, though. He was prominently featured in a February 2004 USA Today poll that raised the weighty question, Should Donald Trump be fired?

"I would vote to severely reprimand him," Sidhu replied. "In today's environment of building trust, we don't want arrogant, imperial CEOs."

Sovereign directors clearly agree.

Dumb-o-Meter score: 90. "Our motto continues to be 'out-local the nationals and out-national the locals,'" Sidhu crooned in a 2002 press release.