Results tagged “wamu”

It was nearly a year ago we when witnessed the financial meltdown and takeover of 119-year old Washington Mutual. Banking FAIL! Flash forward to today, KING5-TV reports close to 100 former vice-presidents and other mid-to-senior level executives of the now-defunct WaMu have filed lawsuits against the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) seeking the government (or, perhaps ultimately the taxpayers) to pay up the millions they're owed.

Amazon is getting sued for broken Kindles and promises to replace them at no charge. JP Morgan says there will be no new layoffs in Seattle, where it purged WaMu's operations after taking it over several months ago. More UW scientists are cashing in on their lab work and raising venture capital to go into the biofuel business.

For a few months now, emails from our friend who still works at WaMu have come with the epilogue: "WaMu, now backed by the strength of JPMorgan Chase."

What a breaking news afternoon we're having. We were alerted by @thesouthlake's tweet about a 3:30 p.m. bank robbery at the WaMu at 5th and Union downtown. KING 5 says the robber says he left a bomb behind, which means he has also left a lot of snarled traffic behind. The suspect is "in his 30s with no facial hair and no glasses," which leaves us out because we're wearing glasses and have been all day. Anyway, that block of 5th is shut down until they sort it out.

Downplay the bad, highlight the good. Don't let your competitors know too much.That's how the sales game is played, and that's the strategy WaMu was trying to use when it asked the courts if it could refrain from disclosing how much it had cost them initially to purchase some of their assets, which are now again for sale. The feds saw right through the potential ploy, though, and the bank got a giant "denied" stamp on its request. The assets in question were declared not part of WaMu's shaken, shaken core, and therefore confidentiality wasn't going to help them against competitors. It certainly wasn't going to help them get their groove back.

Today, we decided to call WaMu to ask about getting our mortgage bailed out in some sort of way, since all the other kool kids are doing it, including WaMu's new sugar daddies themselves.

The Seattle Times reports that JP Morgan will lay off as many as 3,000 WaMu employees in the Seattle area, cutting the local WaMu workforce to just under a third of its former glory. Layoffs begin this week, and by December 1--in the thick of the holiday shopping season--all of the decisions will have been made about who stays and who goes. This doesn't come as a surprise, but the numbers are breathtaking and the impact on our local economy will be significant. From the Times article: "'It's pretty dire for Seattle,' said one former high-ranking executive." Brace yourselves--it's looking like a cold, lean winter ahead.

At some point in the near future, we know we'll read a long, detailed explanation of every false step and bad decision that wound up destroying a 119-year-old Seattle institution.

Daniel Gross at Slate has a theory: "The higher the concentration of expensive, nautically themed, faux-Italian-branded Frappuccino joints in a country's financial capital, the more likely the country is to have suffered catastrophic financial losses." Australia, the UK, and South Korea embraced Starbucks and are now facing financial crises. Egypt, Brazil, and Italy have few if any Starbucks outlets, and their banks are doing relatively well. (Trivia fact gleaned from Gross' article: There are only 3 Starbucks in Africa, and they're all in Egypt.) Manhattan has over 200 places to buy a venti cappuccino, and we all know how that town's major industry has been doing. And Gross does not have noticed, but we did: Can it be coincidence that WaMu, the Fortune 500 financial institution based in Starbucks' home town, has been wiped away like a foam mustache? We think not.

The local blogosphere has fastened on the news that WaMu's former president and COO Stephen Rotella is asking $6.25 million for his 1909 Capitol Hill mansion--the Stranger's investigative reporter Dan Savage bicycled by to produce a photo of the real estate in question. Ironically, the asking price exhibits the kind of crazy thinking that sank WaMu; Rotella bought the place for $3.78 million just three years ago. Now, during a major market downturn, he apparently thinks he's due a 65 percent return. That's a lot of fixer-upping!

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• WaMu really can't catch a break. The Belltowner and PhinneyWood report that their neighborhood WaMu branches were robbed over the weekend.
• Mid Beacon Hill explores "cheap South End fun," including a place that should be on the hipster street-of-dreams, and the Museum of Communications. Being a tourist in your own city is totally fun, so the idea of being a tourist in your own neighborhood strikes us as completely delightful.
• So that's why we didn't have power on Saturday night in the CD. Of course, since we had no power we couldn't log on to check Central District News for updates, but it's nice to know now.

On this afternoon's Fast Money, the CNBC show for the ritalin-munching financial types, a segment of the show was dedicated to the Royal Bank of Scotland, which is looking less and less regal with each passing day. Today, the stock was down 44% and now trades at less than 2 bucks. (Sound familiar?) When asked if the stock was worth the risk as a buy, commentator Jeff Macke responded, "RBS is nothing more than WaMu in a kilt," which made us shudder at the thought of Kerry Killinger's pasty white legs.

We switched most of our banking over to USAA last year (WaMu was pretty good for a bank, but USAA is stellar). We've still got an account at WaMu, though. As recommended, we'll continue to use WaMu's website as usual, and we're not really worried about the security of our well-under-$100,000 deposit. But we were curious about what's going to happen when at our local branches. Consumerist found a banking insider to provide a one-year timeline of the assimilation process. Short version of the prediction: No big changes for about 6 months, but by the end of the year you'll be writing Chase-logoed checks and saying "good morning" to different faces at your local branch.

Marketwatch has a good FAQ for Washington Mutual clients wondering if their money is still there. Short answer: it's all good. Unless you're a shareholder. Shareholders are screwed--officially, whenever what's left of WaMu declares bankruptcy. Alan Fishman, WaMu's 3-week CEO, is not screwed, though it may be difficult for him to find another job that pays $18 million per month. WaMu depositors precipitated the bank's failure by withdrawing $16.7 billion in a little over a week. The only silver lining is that buyer "JPMorgan Chase will absorb at least $31 billion in losses that would normally have fallen to the F.D.I.C."

JPMorgan Chase is holding a conference call at 6:15 p.m. today, and the expected topic is its purchase of (part of) Washington Mutual. WaMu was frenetically batting its eyelashes at any suitor within bidding distance, especially with news of a bailout in the offing, potentially keeping WaMu's toxic mortgage holdings from being a dead loss. Bloomberg says that federal regulators decided to press the issue, and seized the bank's assets today. JPMorgan Chase is apt to pluck the shiniest apple, WaMu's thriving retail bank.

We've been so nervous about what's going to happen to our local savings and loan, Washington Mutual. And then today, we hear that you're thinking of just pulling more billions of dollars out of nowhere (Why not? The nation's already in severe debt!) to cover the debts of our failing financial institutions. While you're at it, could you also pay off our debts? You can start with our student loans, since the money is actually owed to the government you oversee, rather than to private investors. Just wondering.

It seems like only days ago that we were being told that WaMu's incoming CEO, Alan Fishman was ready to turn lead into gold: "I do think I have the skills to take it to the next level." But the next level sounds like drumming up curb appeal for the beleaguered savings and loan. Today the New York Times says that WaMu's shopping for buyers. Goldman Sachs is playing matchmaker, and has sounded out Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC. Good luck with that. WaMu closed today at $2.01, rising slightly in after hours trading.

We know how bad this whole crashing economy is. Really, we do. But every cloud has a silver lining, and we're pretty sure the sparkle you can see just past today's bankrupt financial giants and tanked WAMU stock is increased transit ridership translating into more routes and added runs on existing routes so you don't have to drive (or pay for gas) anymore.

Washington Mutual stock closed down today (why haven't we made that into auto-text yet?), at $2.01, which is also the price of this Murder City Devils DVD on eBay. The market closed down 500. The Fed let the market put a bullet in the head of Lehman Brothers over the weekend, and the Merrill Lynch bull was sold to the Bank of America slaughterhouse, so no one's in the mood to buy WaMu's pigs-in-a-poke shares. If our local savings and loan goes woohoo, though, we know who to blame. Or not. Scientific consensus our ass.

WaMu's bargain-basement stock dropped almost 30% today--it's currently rallied to $2.60 from a low of $2.30--after a 20% fall yesterday. So the market doesn't seem impressed with the WaMu Board's tardy ejection of Kerry Killinger from the executive suite. Bloomberg says: "Credit-default swaps on WaMu are now trading at a price that implies a greater than 90 percent chance the company will default within five years." New accounting rules make selling WaMu and its subprime-mortgage battered portfolio much harder--any acquirer would have to put up extra capital against default--but incoming CEO Alan Fishman says he doesn't even want to sell anyway. So that's lucky.

At long last, struggling Washington Mutual acceded to the inevitable and showed CEO Kerry Killinger the door. Thanks to our local newspapers' canny investments in business coverage, we're hearing about immensely important local news the day after the Wall Street Journal reported on Killinger's exit. The Seattle Times is running an AP story, and the P-I made its whole business staff (i.e., Bill Virgin) come in over the weekend and write something up. The Times did get a special from Jon Talton that recaps the WaMu/Killinger situation, and it's worth reading. If incoming head Alan Fishman's job is to work on WaMu's curb appeal, Seattle may be about to take a hard hit.

It's not a good day for a bank when the Seattle Times story on the crater your stock fell into begins like this:

Your money is safe if its in an institution insured by the FDIC. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. covers up to $100,000 per institution, and even may provide additional coverage for IRAs in those banks.

When we read that the Seattle Times had a large feature on the top paid CEOs in the Pacific Northwest, we wondered what the point was. Everyone knows Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Jeff Bezos—all local CEOs—are richer than God. And it turns out everyone, this Seattlest included, is wrong. According to the Times piece, the best paid local CEO in 2007 was James Voelker, who runs Bellevue's InfoSpace—a company we've never heard of. Despite its public anonymity (outside of technology circles) Voelker was handsomely paid (okay, obscenely paid) for his work. In 2007, he raked in $38,143,383...a salary we would be pleased to have 1/64th of on our greediest days.

Business Week scores yesterday's WaMu shareholders meeting, "activists three, bank zero." The Seattle Times settles for "contentious," while the P-I has this leading question for CEO Kerry Killinger from Lee Lannoye, a shareholder and former WaMu executive vice president: "You have destroyed the company--why are you not being held accountable?" MSN Money captures the executive team in action at Benaroya Hall like so:

"I just want people to calm down and have a little faith," said CEO Kerry Killinger at the company's annual shareholder meeting late Tuesday. "We will get through this."

Subprime mortgages were like steroids for lenders; they ballooned up. Now Washington Mutual is shrinking back down to a regular size. It's exiting the wholesale lending arena, and shuttering all 186 of its stand-alone home loan centers. That means layoffs of 3,000 employees, even though WaMu will still be offering home loans through its retail branches. The AP has the full restructuring story. (Wonder how many of those employees have WaMu mortgages?)

WaMu is like a free public water fountain these days. Except instead of water, it's all bad news. And it's not free, it's costing billions. But it is highly public!

Wall Street is a terrific place. If we wanted to be worth more money in desperate circumstances, we'd probably have to come up with more than a rumor. But not when it comes to the stock market.

These are, you'd think, the pertinent numbers about Washington Mutual's 2007.