WMB was seized unlawfully and some time in the near future JPM Chase will be paying for their ill-conceived plan to destroy a 100-year-old institution.
The closing of the Purchase and Assumption Agreement has still not occurred, the FDIC is waiting on a final bill from the Bankruptcy court. Oh yes there will be a big one. First the FDIC did not have the authority to close the Bank, that belonged to the Office of Thrift Supervision. In order to close and take the bank into receivership a solvency analysis needed to be done to determine if the banks were solvent; because this was never done, no cease and desist order or Re-Capitalization Letter was ever issued.
For months JPM had been working with the FDIC on how to conduct the Auction. For Months JPM had been getting inside information from WMB under Sham Negotiations to buy the bank. You keep hearing that JPM offered $8.00 a share for WMB that too is wrong, it was more like $4.00 a share and it would have been a stock transfer. True JPM left open the possibility that it could go as high as $8.00 a share, depending on the Loan Portfolio’s performance but after the deal has been done who is going to pay more.
It was right after WMI brought on Steve Rotella from JPM that the troubles began; though Rotella was apparently let go right after the seizure it was the people that he brought over from JPM that caused the problems, specifically the risk assessments and others in charge of lending. Oddly enough those that were brought in and did the most damage to the WMI lending portfolio were kept on by JPM and doing well.
To get to the heart of the matter, if the FDIC did not have the funds to cover WMI shouldn’t have gone down it would never have been able to cover to 70-90 trillion dollars JPM had out in Derivatives. AIG went down because of this and JPM was next on the list. JPM knew it The FDIC knew it and together they worked to get JPM the bank it wanted and needed to stay alive.
WMI had the Capital it needed to survive, JPM did not. Project Philmore was to downstream 20 billion dollars from WMBfsb to WMB, all of the required documents were in so the FDIC and the OTS were well aware of the ability of WMI to re-capitalize.
What is the outcome of all of this? Most likely JPM will retain WMB as well as WMBfsb and everything else stolen. The Bankruptcy court in Delaware will set a fair value and damages and the FDIC will be handed a tremendous bill, most likely above 200 billion dollars. Then the FDIC will hand JPM Chase a bill for the remaining balance and the deal will be closed. The Share holders of WMI will be made whole.