Indymac Bank

The sale of IndyMac Federal Bank was concluded Thursday, and the new owners wasted no time in ditching its tainted name. Starting today, IndyMac is OneWest Bank. The Pasadena bank's new owners, organized under OneWest Bank Group, bought the bank's $20.7 billion in loans and other assets for $16 billion. That includes $9 billion in financing from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Home Loan Bank. For IndyMac customers it will be business as usual.

In a setback for federal regulators, a federal judge threw out many of the fraud allegations against former IndyMac Bancorp Chief Executive Michael W. Perry in a case stemming from the collapse of the onetime Pasadena mortgage lender. U.S. District Judge Manuel Real tossed five of seven public filings late Monday that had supported civil claims filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He also ruled that Perry could not be forced to repay allegedly ill-gotten gains. Perry's lead attorney, Jean Veta of Covington & Burling in Washington, said the SEC suit "should never have been filed" and that she would contest the remaining accusations at a non-jury trial scheduled for June 26 before Real.

The federal government took control of Pasadena-based IndyMac Bank on Friday in what regulators called the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history. Citing a massive run on deposits, regulators shut its main branch three hours early, leaving customers stunned and upset. One woman leaned on the locked doors, pleading with an employee inside: "Please, please, I want to take out a portion." All she could do was read a two-page notice taped to the door.

Former IndyMac Bancorp Chief Executive Michael W. Perry has won dismissal of much of the fraud lawsuit brought against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission. U.S. District Judge Manuel Real in L.A. tossed out five of the seven SEC filings by IndyMac that the agency's suit listed as grounds for action. Real ruled Monday that the filings from the giant Pasadena thrift contained no false or misleading statements to investors about IndyMac's deteriorating condition as the housing markets melted down.

The billionaires' club of private financiers who took over the remains of IndyMac Bank from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. turned a profit of $1.57 billion last year on the failed mortgage lender -- more than they invested less than a year ago. Yet under the sale agreement, the federal deposit insurance fund still could lose nearly $11 billion on bad loans that the Pasadena institution made before it was sold last March and renamed OneWest Bank....

In a setback for federal regulators, a federal judge threw out many of the fraud allegations against former IndyMac Bancorp Chief Executive Michael W. Perry in a case stemming from the collapse of the onetime Pasadena mortgage lender. U.S. District Judge Manuel Real tossed five of seven public filings late Monday that had supported civil claims filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He also ruled that Perry could not be forced to repay allegedly ill-gotten gains. Perry's lead attorney, Jean Veta of Covington & Burling in Washington, said the SEC suit "should never have been filed" and that she would contest the remaining accusations at a non-jury trial scheduled for June 26 before Real.

Private investors closed a deal Friday to buy Pasadena's IndyMac Bank from regulators, promising to make the 33-branch thrift a "healthy banking institution" again. How exactly do they plan to accomplish that? So far, no one's saying. IndyMac collapsed July 11, 2008, the victim of an ill-fated strategy of using high-interest deposits to fund mortgage loans to borrowers who often weren't asked to document their earnings or assets.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairwoman Sheila Bair last year disappointed underinsured depositors of failed IndyMac Bank when she said they would need an act of Congress to recover money lost when the mortgage lender collapsed. Now those former IndyMac customers are hopeful after two Southern California members of Congress introduced an FDIC-backed bill to repay much of their losses. "I am walking on a cloud," said Gina Martelli, who lost $63,000 — money from a disability settlement — that was over the FDIC's $100,000-per-depositor limit that was in place when IndyMac was seized July 11, 2008.

A long-awaited sale of IndyMac Bank may be announced as early as today. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has been looking for a buyer, or buyers, for the Pasadena lender since the government declared it insolvent and seized it in July. Final bids were due by Dec. 12, and the FDIC said it expected to close a deal by the end of the year. The American Banker newspaper reported Tuesday that the announcement could come today.

Southern California home builders Richard Ashby and Lawrence Redman were running short on resources, but not ambition. Already heavily in debt and with signs of a recession on the horizon, the developers needed more money, this time to build several hundred homes in southeastern Riverside County. So they turned to Pasadena-based IndyMac Bank in 2006 for a much-needed capital infusion. They got their $40-million loan, but what unfolded was an all-too-familiar horror story as the national recession slammed the Inland Empire economy.

The former chairman of IndyMac Bank has alleged a key banking regulator "specifically directed" him to backdate $18 million in capital onto the Pasadena thrift's books to help prop up the company at the peak of the financial crisis. Michael W. Perry, who is battling fraud allegations connected to the thrift's failure in 2008, said that cash was added to the balance sheet during the first quarter of 2008 even though the money arrived more than a month after the quarter closed. The regulator was Darrel W. Dochow, former Western regional director for the Office of Thrift Supervision, a U.S. Treasury Department agency that "had the final say regarding IndyMac Bank's capital levels," Perry said in a statement posted online.

A Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. lawsuit against former IndyMac Bancorp Chief Executive Michael W. Perry is the agency's second-largest attempt to recover money from bank officials whose approval of risky home loans during the housing boom allegedly caused the institutions to fail. The negligence suit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles, seeks $600 million, a fraction of the $13 billion the deposit-insurance fund lost because of IndyMac Bank's collapse in July 2008.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused former executives of the housing boom's biggest stated-income lender, IndyMac Bancorp, of defrauding investors at the failed Pasadena savings and loan. The civil lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in Los Angeles, contends that former Chief Executive Michael W. Perry and former CFOs A. Scott Keys and S. Blair Abernathy misled investors about the crumbling financial condition of IndyMac and its IndyMac Bank operating unit by filing false disclosures with the SEC. "The three executives regularly received internal reports about IndyMac's deteriorating capital and liquidity positions in 2007 and 2008, but failed to ensure adequate disclosure of that information to investors as IndyMac sold millions of dollars in new stock," the SEC said in a news release.

Southern California home builders Richard Ashby and Lawrence Redman were running short on resources, but not ambition. Already heavily in debt and with signs of a recession on the horizon, the developers needed more money, this time to build several hundred homes in southeastern Riverside County. So they turned to Pasadena-based IndyMac Bank in 2006 for a much-needed capital infusion. They got their $40-million loan, but what unfolded was an all-too-familiar horror story as the national recession slammed the Inland Empire economy.

Launching a new offensive against leaders of failed financial institutions, federal regulators are accusing four former executives of Pasadena's defunct IndyMac Bank of granting loans to developers and home builders who were unlikely to repay the debts. The lawsuit by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. alleges that the IndyMac executives acted negligently and seeks $300 million in damages. It is the first suit of its kind brought by the FDIC in connection with the spate of more than 250 bank failures that began in 2008.

Lawmakers completing a sweeping overhaul of financial regulations have given 8,700 former account holders at failed IndyMac Bank a surprise gift, retroactively increasing government-backed deposit insurance limits that would allow them to recover some of their lost money. The move came Tuesday as House and Senate negotiators agreed to permanently increase to $250,000 the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. coverage for individual accounts and to make it retroactive to Jan. 1, 2008. Congress temporarily boosted the coverage from $100,000 per account during the financial crisis in October 2008 — three months after federal regulators seized the Pasadena savings and loan.

Former IndyMac Bancorp Chief Executive Michael W. Perry has won dismissal of much of the fraud lawsuit brought against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission. U.S. District Judge Manuel Real in L.A. tossed out five of the seven SEC filings by IndyMac that the agency's suit listed as grounds for action. Real ruled Monday that the filings from the giant Pasadena thrift contained no false or misleading statements to investors about IndyMac's deteriorating condition as the housing markets melted down.

A Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. lawsuit against former IndyMac Bancorp Chief Executive Michael W. Perry is the agency's second-largest attempt to recover money from bank officials whose approval of risky home loans during the housing boom allegedly caused the institutions to fail. The negligence suit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles, seeks $600 million, a fraction of the $13 billion the deposit-insurance fund lost because of IndyMac Bank's collapse in July 2008.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairwoman Sheila Bair last year disappointed underinsured depositors of failed IndyMac Bank when she said they would need an act of Congress to recover money lost when the mortgage lender collapsed. Now those former IndyMac customers are hopeful after two Southern California members of Congress introduced an FDIC-backed bill to repay much of their losses. "I am walking on a cloud," said Gina Martelli, who lost $63,000 — money from a disability settlement — that was over the FDIC's $100,000-per-depositor limit that was in place when IndyMac was seized July 11, 2008.

The billionaires' club of private financiers who took over the remains of IndyMac Bank from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. turned a profit of $1.57 billion last year on the failed mortgage lender -- more than they invested less than a year ago. Yet under the sale agreement, the federal deposit insurance fund still could lose nearly $11 billion on bad loans that the Pasadena institution made before it was sold last March and renamed OneWest Bank....