Washington Mutual

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"WaMu" redirects here. For the Washington, DC, radio station, see WAMU.

Washington Mutual, Inc.

Type	Public (NYSE: WM)
Founded	1889
Headquarters	Seattle, Washington
Key people	Kerry Killinger, CEO
Industry	Finance and Insurance
Products	Consumer Banking Financial Services
Revenue	$15.962 billion USD
Employees	60,798
Subsidiaries	WaMu Investments, Inc; Washington Mutual Insurance Services; Washington Mutual Card Services
Website	http://www.wamu.com/

The Washington Mutual Tower in Seattle, Washington

A Washington Mutual Financial Center in San Jose, California

Washington Mutual (or WaMu; NYSE: WM) is the United States' largest savings and loan association.^[1] Despite its name, it is not a credit union, and ceased being a mutual company in 1983. It is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Washington Mutual's principal activities are to provide financial services to consumers and small businesses such as retail banking, mortgage lending, consumer lending, business banking, business lending, insurance services, credit card services, commercial real estate mortgage and consumer investment services.

Washington Mutual is the sole surviving major Seattle-based bank after the flurry of mergers in the 1980s and 1990s ended the independence of Rainier Bank, Seafirst Bank, and Peoples National Bank, among others.

Washington Mutual operates more than 2,600 retail banking, mortgage lending, commercial banking, and financial services offices, as of June 30, 2006.

1 History
2 Occasio Branches
3 Acquisitions
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

Washington Mutual was founded as the Washington National Building Loan and Investment Association on September 25, 1889, in an attempt to save Seattle's economy after a fire nearly destroyed the city. The newly formed company made its first home mortgage loan on the West Coast on February 10, 1890. Its name was changed to Washington Savings and Loan Association on June 25, 1908. During World War I, its assets would expand by 68%.

By now called Washington Mutual Savings Bank, the company made its first acquisition on July 25, 1930, by purchasing Continental Mutual Savings Bank. Over the next fifty years, it would be involved in pioneering cash machine networks and telephone banking.

Its marketing slogan for much of its history was "The Friend of the Family."

In 1983, Washington Mutual bought the brokerage firm, Murphey Favre, and demutualized. Today, it trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol WM. By 1989, its assets had doubled.

In March 2006, Washington Mutual began moving into its new headquarters, WaMu Center, located in downtown Seattle. The company's previous headquarters, Washington Mutual Tower, still stands about a block away from the new building on Second Avenue.

In August 2006, Washington Mutual began using the official abbreviation of WaMu in all but the legal viewpoint.

In December 2007, Washington Mutual announced a reorganization of its home loan division which resulted in closing 160 of its 336 home loan offices. This resulted in a loss of 2600 positions in its home loan staff (a 22% reduction).

In April 2008, Washington Mutual, responding to losses and difficulties sustained as a result of the home mortgage crisis of 2007-08, announced a $7 billion infusion of new capital by new outside investors led by TPG Capital, formerly Texas Pacific Group. TPG will pump $2 billion into WaMu; other so-far-unidentified investors, including some of WaMu's current institutional holders, will buy an additional $5 billion in newly issued stock. 3,000 people companywide will lose their jobs, and it will close its approximately 186 remaining stand-alone home-loan offices, including 23 in Washington State and a loan-processing center in Bellevue. It also will stop buying loans from outside mortgage brokers — known in the trade as "wholesale lending." ^[2]

In June 2008, Kerry Killinger stepped down as the Chairman, though he remains the CEO.

[edit] Occasio Branches

Washington Mutual has a number of branches which it groups under the banner of "Occasio Branches". Occasio is Latin for "favorable opportunity" or "special occasion" (which is also the root of the English word, occasion). These branches are designed to provide a more open space than a traditional bank branch, and to have a look and feel similar to that of a contemporary retail store. Customers are given teller action figures when they open an account. Instead of teller windows at a counter with a roped-off queue for customers, tellers process customer transactions at individual stations. At these branches, the tellers ordinarily do not give cash directly to customers, but instead give customers a receipt with a PIN. Customers then walk over to an ATM-like money dispensing machine where they enter the one-time generated PIN to receive cash. At some Occasio branches, the money is dispensed directly from the teller station, instead of a central machine.

[edit] Acquisitions

A Washington Mutual in Naperville, Illinois

Since the acquisition of Murphey Favre, Washington Mutual has made numerous acquisitions with the aim of expanding the corporation. By acquiring corporations such as PNC Mortgage, Fleet Mortgage, and Homeside Lending; Washington Mutual is now the third largest mortgage lender in the United States. With the acquisition of Providian Financial Corporation in October 2005, WaMu has also become the nation's 9th largest credit card company.

A list of Washington Mutual acquisitions since demutualization follows: