Saw it print as low as 51 cents. ********************************* WM Washington Mutual: J.P. Morgan to Buy Bulk Of WaMu Operations - WSJ (1.72 +0.03) -Update- The WSJ reports that J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) was expected to announce as early as Thursday night a deal to acquire the bulk of Washington Mutual Inc.'s (WM) operations in a deal that would mark the end of independence for what once was the largest U.S. thrift. Federal regulators have been heavily involved in orchestrating the transaction, which comes as WaMu was besieged by a mountain of bad mortgage loans. WaMu, of Seattle, has been scrambling to find a solution and put itself on the auction block last week. A number of interested parties have been studying WaMu's books, but the bank didn't receive any offers. While the exact structure of the transaction wasn't immediately known, J.P. Morgan is expected to acquire Washington Mutual's deposits and branches, as well as other operations. The deal isn't expected to result in any hit to the bank-insurance fund, which would be a huge relief given that some analysts worried that a failure of the thrift could cost more than $20 billion
Since no one can short it there probably won't be the usual short squeezes that drag these losers stocks back up to $.50 or so. It will be interesting to see how this things trades with no shorting.
not just common, all the debt holders are wiped out. It's a fdic seizure, they just passed it to jpm right away, but still doesnt change the fact it's a fdic seizure.
What I don't get is why it initially went up about .50 after the news. I just can't believe it took well over 1/2 an hour for the market to figure out that the news was so bad.
initially market thought jpm bought wm, so of course stock went up. then cnbc reported it wasnt the case, it fell to <0.5, then the idiot speculators came in and bought it back up to 0.9, then cnbc confirmed common is wiped out, and it fell back down. made a few coins on this chaos
I came in to buy some at a buck a share to watch it go to 38 cents. Not a big loss but just sucks to be scalping it and can only scalp to the long side and get caught with some inventory.
It does appear to be an FDIC seizure from a timing standpoint: WM branches on the West Coast are open from 9:00am to 6:00pm Pacific Time. The FDIC would then seize the WM branches at 6:01pm Pacific Time today (Thursday, Sept 25). JPM has a conference call scheduled for 9:15pm Eastern Time tonite, which is 6:15 Pacific Time. The timeline looks right for a seizure... WM shareholders are probably wiped out. (Maybe WM will keep their credit card operations and commercial lending operations.)