by Pam Martens at Russ Martens at Wall Street on Parade
On Wall Street, the business model is you eat what you kill. Jamie Dimon and the bank he helms, JPMorgan Chase, just devoured First Republic Bank after Dimon had orchestrated the worst “rescue” of First Republic in the history of banking rescues. Given the outcome, one has to wonder if this rescue flop was a bug or a feature. (See Related Articles below.)
After 7 weeks of Jamie Dimon’s “rescue,” First Republic and its preferred shares had been downgraded by credit rating agencies to junk; its common stock had lost 98 percent of its market value, closing at $3.51 on Friday and at $1.90 in pre-market trading early this morning; its long-term bonds were trading at 43 cents on the dollar; and depositors continued to flee the bank.
And in order to pay out all those deposits that were taking flight, First Republic had to take out expensive loans from the Fed, the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and a credit line from JPMorgan Chase, jeopardizing its future profitability. The interest cost of those loans significantly exceeded, in many cases, the rates it had locked in on the jumbo residential mortgages it had made to its wealthy clients and the government-backed bonds it had purchased during years of low interest rates on Treasury securities.
JPMorgan Chase’s statement on the takeover of First Republic this morning indicated that it “is not assuming First Republic’s corporate debt or preferred stock” and the “FDIC will provide loss share agreements covering acquired single-family residential mortgage loans and commercial loans, as well as $50 billion of five-year, fixed-rate term financing.”…
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