So when they decided to let us depositors vote on whether to go
forward with their big public offering, I was inclined to vote no,
knowing full well that my vote wouldn't count for much. At the same
time, they offered to sweeten the deal by letting depositors purchase
shares at $20. The accompanying material indicated that the stock had
been trading in the $40 range, so this sounded like a good deal. If
I'd read all the exceedingly voluminous fine print, I might also have
learned that the $40 price was from before the 21:10 stock split.

Anyway, sure, I hedged my bet and bought some stock, not enough to
hurt myself, I'm happy to say. And it's been downhill ever since.

Now the board has decided to reward top executives for, um, the
performance of the stock???? I dunno. What, exactly, ARE we rewarding
them for? Tell me again what John Klein has done to deserve $44
million as a retention bonus.

Although Peoples denies the possiblity of being bought out, it is very
realistic to think that it can still happen. In the case Peoples
remains independent, give the stock some time and it will return to
$20.

I think I'll be money ahead if I sell it and take the loss to offset
some income.

Anyway, thanks for your optimistic assessment.

It seems to me that you really have no idea what you're talking
about.  The only reason why this company is down is because of this
whole credit crunch, and mortgage business.  The whole financial
sector is down.  People's is a conservative company and was barely
affected by the whole mess that other financial companies were.  When
Citi is writing off $34 billion because of bad mortgages, People's is
only writing off $10 million.  So the company is down $3 and change
from the offering, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are down 45% and 57%
ytd.  And finally with the acquistion of Chittenden, the combined
company will have over $20 billion worth of assets and be operating in
7 states.  So stop your whining, once the fed gets a grip on this
economy People's is going to take off.  The stock will be trading at
over $50 within the next 2 years.

From your mouth into God's ear, regarding the price. However, you did
not address a single one of the points I raised. I see People's as
behaving cynically and hypocritically toward its depositors and
investors. You can call that conservative if you want, but it doesn't
meet my definition of conservative.