Mr Cooper Group Inc fka COOP

[JohnnyWinter]

What a Deal

by Kirsten Grind Dec 28 2009

"JPMorgan's purchase of WaMu was the deal of a lifetime. But did the Manhattan giant have inside information when it made that deal? "



..."We were watching money “fly out of the bank,” from a “war room” at JPMorgan’s New York headquarters, said one JPMorgan executive, according to these people.


WaMu staffers who heard the comment were startled. They believed that kind of detailed information was strictly confidential, known only to a select handful at WaMu—and the bank’s federal regulators.

There were several of us that looked at each other and thought, Did he just say that?” said one former employee who attended."

A JPMorgan official who was at the meeting denied this week that the remark was made and that the bank had such information. Dimon and other officials declined repeated requests to comment further for this story.



If JPMorgan had this kind of inside knowledge of WaMu’s deposit run, that means the corporate privacy of the nation’s largest savings and loan could have been compromised—with immense implications for WaMu executives, the bank, and its thousands of shareholders. At the time, just weeks before WaMu’s September 25 seizure, the executives were trying quietly to sell the bank, and were at the same time battling, with the help of the communications team, to control WaMu’s image and quash rumors about financial problems during the intense financial turbulence of 2008.

It is possible that JPMorgan received the information through a normal due diligence process: The bank had signaled its interest in WaMu’s auction and had access to its “data room” of financial reports. But a WaMu executive familiar with WaMu’s bidders at the time said that detailed deposit outflow information was not handed out to prospective buyers."




http://www.portfolio.com/industry-news/banking-finance/2009/12/28/what-a-deal-jp-morgan-got-for-wamu/