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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,428641,00.html
WaMu Gives New CEO Mega Payout as Bank Fails

Friday, September 26, 2008

Nice work - if you can get fired from it.

That's just what one Alan H. Fishman might have thought when he woke up Friday morning.

Fishman was the new chief executive officer for Washingon Mutual
WaMu the nation's largest savings and loan, which was taken over Thursday
night by federal bank regulators and quickly dumped in a fire sale to
JPMorgan Chase for the Wal-Mart-like price of $1.9 billion.

But don't cry for Fishman, who reportedly was sky-high- literally -
last night, on a flight from New York to Seattle, when WaMu collapsed.
Even though he's only been on the job for less than three weeks, he's
bailing out with parachute worth close to $20 million, according to an
executive compensation analysis conducted for the New York Times by
James F. Reda Associates.

That's right, $20 million for 17 days on the job ... and his company
failed.

Fishman, who formerly was chairman of Meridian Capital Group, apparently
was much coveted by WaMu, which was counting on him to lead the failing
thrift out of mortgage troubles that pushed the bank to a $3.3 billion
second-quarter loss.

According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, WaMu
threw a $7.5 million bonus at Fishman when it hired him on Sept. 8, and
guaranteed him an immediate cash severence of $11.6 million - both of
which he gets to keep.

He also was eligible for annual bonuses of up to 365 percent of his
annual base pay - set at $1 million - to go with millions of shares of
company stock.

Fishman does lose out on a big bonus that would have kicked in had he
remained on the job through 2009.

Documents show WaMu was going to pay their new boss $8 million to simply
not screw up and get fired - all negotiated as the Seattle-based banking
giant's loses climbed to an estimated $20 billion.

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/73916/WaMu-Wipeout-%27Gross-Mismanagement%27-by-Former-CEO-Killinger?tickers=WM,JPM,BAC,C,XLF,WFC,WB

WaMu Wipeout: 'Gross Mismanagement' by Former CEO Killinger
Washington Mutual paid former CEO Kerry Killinger $14.4 million in 2007 and over $54 million from
2002-07, Forbes reports. In return, the nearly 120-year-old firm was led into the biggest bank
failure in U.S. history.

Under Killinger's watch, WaMu rushed headlong into toxic mortgage-backed products like option-ARMs,
which contributed mightily to the company's epic failure. Thursday evening, the Federal Deposit
Insurance Co. seized Washington Mutual's assets and then quickly sold most of the firm to JPMorgan,
effectively wiping out the thrift's shareholders and debt holders in the process.

Also vaporized: The $7 billion investment TPG made in WaMu last spring -- after Killinger declined
an $8 per share offer from JPMorgan, which might have looked low then but sure as heck beats zero.

"Gross mismanagement" is how Henry Blodget describes Killinger's oversight of the company. I'm sure
many of WaMu's investors, employees and depositors would prefer terms unsuitable for publication,
especially when they learn current WaMu CEO Alan Fishman is entitled to $11.6 million in cash
severance and to keep his $7.5 million signing bonus, The New York Times reports. (Not bad for about
three weeks of work.)


Jan Rasmussen