Jun 3, 2015, 7:06am PDT
This is one in a series where the Puget Sound Business Journal counts down the top 35 most influential business leaders of the last 35 years. The countdown is part of the PSBJ’s 35th anniversary celebration.
Kerry Killinger was once one of America’s most lauded bankers. He pulled in more than $100 million in compensation during his last five years as CEO of Seattle-based Washington Mutual Bank.
Then it all collapsed. He largely disappeared from public view.
Kerry Killinger oversaw the rise and fall of Washington Mutual.
Enlarge
Killinger was fired as WaMu’s CEO two weeks before federal regulators seized the bank on Sept. 25, 2008, and sold most of its operations to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion. At the time, WaMu’s assets totaled $307 billion.
It was then, and still is, the biggest bank failure in U.S. history.
Thousands of people lost their jobs. Investors lost billions of dollars. Seattle lost a major headquarters and a 119-year-old corporate citizen. The implications of that failure are still playing out today.
During his 18 years at WaMu, Killinger had overseen, as his LinkedIn account still describes it, the Seattle bank’s “expansion from small regional thrift to a nationwide financial services company.”
A native of Iowa, Killinger was a young executive a Spokane’s Murphey Favre when it was acquired by WaMu in 1982. WaMu kept Killinger, naming him an executive vice president. He was promoted to CEO in 1990 at age 40.
As documented in “The Lost Bank” by former Puget Sound Business Journal reporter Kirsten Grind, Killinger led a thrift that was fondly known as “The Friend of the Family” under Lou Pepper toward ever-more-aggressive growth strategy. That was exemplified by its purchase of subprime lender Long Beach Mortgage, whose billions in losses amid a financial meltdown spurred the 2008 run on WaMu that led to its demise.
After the JPMorgan takeover, WaMu branches were rebranded to Chase or shut down. Killinger and other WaMu execs were sued for $900 million by the FDIC. That case was settled, as were a pair of civil suits brought by shareholders; insurance companies paid about $250 million.
Killinger’s LinkedIn profile now names him as the principal of Crescent Capital Associates LLC, a limited liability company with a mailing address on the 18th floor of Seattle’s Smith Tower. The firm, according to the profile, “provides strategic planning, research and other advisory services to companies and investors.” It has no website to be found.
www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/2015/06/...cutives-no-13.html
Zurück
Weiter
