A friend and former East Coaster wonders if he’ll be able to visit Wachovia Bank  branches in St. Louis, now that the bank’s parent company is buying A.G. Edwards & Sons.

The answer apparently is no. Although the Wachovia Securities unit will be based in  St. Louis, parent-company CEO Ken Thompson  says Wachovia has no plans to buy a Midwestern bank. He said during yesterday’s conference call:

The fact that the (brokerage) headquarters is in the Midwest says nothing about our intention to acquire banks in the Midwest. We like the U-shaped footprint that we have … and that’s where we will be focusing on the banking side.

For us, smaller deals in the Southwest and West would be possibilities, but I don’t think you’ll see us doing anything significant from a merger standpoint for a while.

The “U-shaped” remark refers to the East Coast, Gulf states and — with the recent purchase of Golden West Financial – the West Coast.