Nicely stated. I agree; based on the balance sheet you show, Washington Mutual, Inc. is showing negative equity and, therefore, we (commons at the very least) should not expect any distributions given that that balance sheet is the end all be all.
There's a very simple formula that is taught on the first day of any beginner's accounting course:
Assets = Liabilities + Equity
or, more pertinent to us right now:
Assets - Liabilities = Equity.
If we were to combine WMI & WMI Investment, we get (as of 2012-02-29):
$7,604,499,861 in assets MINUS $8,839,465,019 in liabilities EQUALS negative $1,234,968,158 in equity.
So, negative equity... ignore the dollar amounts for preferred and common stock; those are just essentially informational at this point. The organization, as a whole, is showing negative equity.
Now, with all that being said, there is some wiggle room. Some of the liabilities are subject to compromise, so that number may go down. Also, balance sheets are usually stated at historical cost, therefore, the market values of some of the assets could be understated. It should be noted that typically, when a company enters bankruptcy, assets are re-stated at market value and I do not know if this balance sheet represents that or not.
The point I'm making, is that the value of the assets and liabilities is currently in flux and it all depends on how aggressive the litigation trust is in getting optimum value of what's currently on the books along with any future litigation, and as such, we should not depend on seeing distributions into the escrow accounts.
Our focus should be on the new shares, and making sure that the new board of directors does what it can in order to take advantage of the NOLs that have been carried over and grow the company and increase the value of our new company shares.
It is not that Radium has killed any unicorns, but only removed the ridiculous fake horn that someone put on the horses' heads.
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