“We are seeing light at the end of the tunnel,” Sheila C. Bair, the head of the F.D.I.C., said in a recent interview.If you believe that I have a bridge I would like to sell you.
- In April, Thomas H. Lee Partners spent $134.7 million for a minority stake in Sterling Financial, a lender based in Spokane, Wash., that has been hobbled by bad real estate loans.
- More recently, Gerald J. Ford, the billionaire investor who made a fortune during thesavings and loan crisis, invested $500 million for a 91 percent stake in Pacific Capital Bancorp of Santa Barbara, Calif. The bank had been trading at around $4. Mr. Ford paid 20 cents a share.
- When it bought three banks in April, TD Bank agreed to swallow a bigger share of their future losses than is typical in an F.D.I.C.-assisted deal. On Monday, TD paid a mere 20 cents a share for South Financial. Although the F.D.I.C did not provide any aid, TD did get some federal help. The Treasury Department agreed to sell $347 million of South Financial preferred shares and warrants for a bargain-basement price of $130.6 million.
- “Without a doubt, there is more confidence than a few months ago,” said Bharat B. Masrani, the head of TD Bank’s United States operations. “There is more transparency and confidence in the ultimate losses of these institutions.”
This sounds like an interesting scam...what else will they offer to support these deals? what prevents these investors from claiming that the Treasury and FDIC sold them a bill of goods? Not much. Expect to see this get very complicated.
- Andrew Williams, a Treasury spokesman, said that it had agreed to the discount, as in previous deals, to “minimize or eliminate our chances of incurring further losses” on its investment in the bank.
