Not long ago, conventional wisdom held that a big brokerage firm needed to be affiliated with a big bank to be successful. Now, with the forced sale of Wachovia Bank’s assets to Citigroup, St. Louis-based Wachovia Securities finds itself as virtually a stand-alone brokerage firm. Parent Wachovia Corp., whose headquarters remain in Charlotte, N.C., also owns Evergreen Asset Management, but its retail banking and investment banking businesses have gone away.

Wachovia is saying that the brokerage operations won’t be directly affected by the bank’s near-failure. Effectively, it’s saying that things will be business as usual for the brokerage employees in St. Louis. But Business Week, for one, thinks the securities business may be attractive to an acquisition-minded competitor:

Of course, it’s not clear how long the slimmed down Wachovia will remain as an independent entity. An asset-manager that’s not weighed down with toxic mortgage-backed securities may be attractive to a firm looking to beef-up its retail brokerage operation.

There’s also the question of what to call the firm. The Wachovia name would seem to be somewhat tainted now. I wonder if anyone has thought about rebranding it as A.G. Edwards?

Of course, if things are uncertain in St. Louis, they’re a little more certain — but certainly downbeat — in Charlotte. The Charlotte Observer is predicting big layoffs among the 20,000 Wachovia employees there, and its story ends with this little slice of Wachovia life:

“Whatever it is, it will be gory,” one employee waiting to buy coffee told a co-worker.

Outside, another employee said tersely, “There is no positive spin.”

The hum of machinery at the construction site across the street overpowered some conversations. That’s where Wachovia is building a new 48-story headquarters and a city arts campus.