Wamu looking for buyout

[Waterbuffalo]

(This is from a culmination of business snippets...)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008015684_bizbriefs25.html

Washington Mutual shareholders Tuesday approved the final step in a $7.2 billion bailout package that puts more than 50 percent of the company in the hands of an investor group led by private equity firm TPG.

The deal's structure gave stockholders little choice — had they not given their approval, WaMu faced paying the group a $792 million dividend, with higher payments down the road.

More than 94 percent of shareholders approved the plan, Seattle-based Washington Mutual said Tuesday in a statement. The first part of the $7 billion package went through in April, when TPG bought 176 million shares at $8.75 apiece, a 33 percent discount at the time.

Outside WaMu's headquarters Tuesday, protesters organized by the Service Employees International Union dressed in hazmat suits to criticize what they called a "toxic deal."

The union says it is concerned that private equity firms seeking quick profits from struggling lenders will "squeeze these returns from troubled banks through higher fees for bank customers, unfair lending practices and exorbitant interest rates on credit cards and other consumer products."

[Chief]

All that is missing at the shareholder meetings these days are the flaming torches and pitchforks...

It's hard to say where all of this is going to end. The sad part is that WAMU employs a lot of people and they are surely feeling the heat these days. Want to see Washington State's unemployment rate spike? Let WAMU fold...

Ongoing...

cewl

[Waterbuffalo]

Watch as TPG pulls out the chainsaws like Al Dunlap did at International Paper which they're bound to do. Wamu has all ready started the process to shutter most of its retail mortgage businesses that it has shown it could not handle.

If they had just stayed true to the original bankers creole, they might have been a heck of a lot smaller but more survivable bank through this crisis. But alas, they jumped on the ninja bandwagon and now the bank and its shareholders are paying the said price for that.

And Seattle will lose one of its marquee banks, the pacific northwest will lose one of its financial institutions and employers and it will spike the unemployment rate for a short time.

I do suspect the non-bittered bank employees and loan officers that have the right retail brokerage licenses and such, will not have a hard time finding work locally or nationally if they're willing to move. So all in all, there's some animosity there. But all of the employees will be able to find similar work if they do choose to continue in the Real Estate or Mortgage lending with some other financial institution.