Washington Mutual grew for over a century into the country's largest savings and loan, aggressively expanding into subprime and adjustable-rate mortgages during the 2000s housing boom, including loans given to buyers with little verified income.
As housing prices crashed, WaMu customers pulled $16.7 billion in deposits in little more than a week, panicked by the bank's mounting mortgage losses. On September 25, 2008, federal regulators seized the bank in the largest bank failure in U.S. history and sold its banking operations to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion — a fraction of its former value.
WaMu's holding company filed for bankruptcy the very next day. Shareholders were wiped out completely, and the seizure became a symbol of just how fragile even America's biggest banks had become.
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