Facts about the $8/share offer.
I am tired of seeing the $8 share price float around on this board. So here is the nutshell history and why all us pre-seizure folks start spitting fire when we read "settlement offers" like the one last Friday....
JPM wanted WM for a long, long, long time. Back in June of 2008 (around there, you can get more specifics if you search my posts from the time of the seizure) JPM made an offer of $8 per share for the commons. They would have assimilated all debt, the preferred, bonds, blah, blah, blah. The WHOLE thing, even though what they really wanted was the branches and deposits. WM shot the offer down. And they had every right and reason to do so. WM (commons) was trading somewhere between $9-11 per share at the time JPM made the offer. Again, you can search my posts. I know I researched and posted the exact prices around the time the offer was made.
Fast forward to September.
Congress was trying to finalize TARP. It was voted down once but was expected to pass the 2nd go around, which we all know it did. Well, the FDIC seized WAMU on a Thursday (most bank seizures are made on Friday) evening, practically in the middle of the night. Thus, my references to the "coup." Amazingly, the FDIC had a buyer and it was all over the wires when the market opened on Friday. hmmmm. Anyone stop to consider how that all materialized? Within a few hours? All the red tape that should have created weeks to finalize and get board approval? The things that make you go hmmmmm. And you had the FDIC patting themselves on the back saying they saved the taxpayers by making the deal so quickly. *rolls eyes*
Anyway, that Friday, WAMU sought Chapter 11 protection. The first item on the agenda: Yeah, ummm, the 4.4B we had on deposit in our bank that you...took...we want that back. I bet the FDIC and JPM both blinked at that news. Did we screw up? You think? No matter, we will claim it is ours. And they did. Both JPM and the FDIC. "Buy" a bank for $1.88B and pay for it with money from the bank you "bought" with a nice cash bonus? SIGN ME UP FOR THAT KIND OF TRANSACTION, PLEASE!!!
The following week TARP passed and low and behold *ironic scoff* JPM took money from TARP. How you prove you are solvent enough to afford to "buy" a $300B bank that is in "trouble" yet turn around requesting money from the government to stay "solvent" yourself is well beyond my mind's comprehension. Thus, why many of us have claimed WM was sacrificed to KEEP JMP in business. But that is neither here nor there....
So now, JPM, a few months after their June offer, has EXACTLY what they wanted from WM all along for a song (without the dance). 2200 branches. "X" amount in deposits. Stronghold in places Chase was not previously well represented....all for the bargain price of $1.88B. Oh, and let’s not forget...the FDIC gave Chase the right to pick and chose which branches they wanted. *holds the silver platter, bows low* How may I serve you...
Say what? When roughly 90 days before they had offered 15.2B just for the commons alone and been shot down? Exactly.
So when we read that this settlement...err...let us use the word proposition...."gave" the 4B in Deposits that we already knew was WAMU's and that WAMU would get back another 2B in tax refunds (mind you, this is WM's tax refund) but was splitting the rest (at a greater percentage then they were collecting themselves) to JPM (an amount parallel with the 1.88B they paid for WM) and the FDIC (the very entity that seized a bank that was admittedly SOLVENT) you can understand our outrage. And what of the 1.88B that JPM supposedly paid? Where is that money accounted for? Nobody seems to know....
There are more issues I could go into (the largest to me being questions as to the interest that the 4.4B should have earned during the past 18 months of litigation) but anyone invested here who does not know the history for themselves needs to some DD of their own.
Is $8+ a share possible? Anything is possible. But then, as much as we hate to admit it, so is $0. Will a wrong be made partially right? Will the justice system hold government sponsored entities and favored banking institutions to the proper standard? If so, we win. If not, we lose. That is the gamble that has become WAMUQ.
AI
