CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Wachovia Corp. chief executive Ken Thompson says he isn't interested in growing Wachovia through a major acquisition in 2008.

Instead, the focus is on integrating the Charlotte bank's two most recent purchases: retail brokerage firm AG Edwards Inc. and Golden West Financial Corp., one of the country's largest mortgage lenders.

"We are very healthy, but we are not really looking to acquire anything," Thompson said at an investor conference in New York.

Similar words came from crosstown rival Bank of America Corp. chief executive Ken Lewis late last year, just weeks before his bank agreed to buy California-based mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp.

When asked why banks seem more interested in buying other banks when the market is doing well, rather than buying at a huge discount, Thompson said, "It's what you think the market is at the time you do it."

Over the past year the bank has found itself defending its $24 billion deal to buy Golden West, which it purchased in 2006 just months before a housing-market slump started to lead to delinquencies, defaults and bankruptcies at mortgage lenders nationwide.

In December, Thompson told The Associated Press that the timing of the deal "was not the best." He said the mortgage market was more troubled than anyone could have predicted.

Even so, it gave the nation's fourth-largest bank by assets a solid foothold in California.

Thompson said Wednesday his bank will focus on building branches from the ground-up, or what the bank calls "de novo" branches.

Since year-end 2002, Wachovia has opened 353 new branches, which contributed to 30 percent of the banks deposit growth in 2007.

"Denovos on average become profitable for us by the end of the second year," Thompson said. "And by the end of the fourth year they have completely paid back the investment and the early losses so that they are very profitable for us."

With that in mind, Thompson said Wachovia plans to open 110 new branches in 2008, heavily weighted toward Texas and the West.

Wachovia entered Texas, a state where the bank didn't have a single branch before 2004, when it bought SouthTrust Corp. for $14.3 billion.

"The thing that Texas has proved to us is if you are willing to go a little slower, you can create a better branch system than you can get by acquiring a branch system," Thompson said.

"We like that strategy and it's going to work for us in California, too."

On the Net: Wachovia Corp.: http://www.wachovia.com

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