IndyMac Bancorp - Wholesale/Retail

griztown at 11:58 2008-06-11 said:

Is Indymac about to go belly up? No news since February but their stock is way down. Something must be happening. Permalink

Trojanbiz at 15:23 2008-06-16 said:

or be bought out by someone w/ a stronger balance sheet. Permalink

8bpChip at 11:26 2008-06-23 said:

It was only a matter of time. Their continued aggressiveness in the alt-a & option arm market, even after the rest of the industry pulled back, finally bit them in the arse. It's annoying competing against one of the most irresponsible lenders since Countrywide. Give away the store with little-to-qualification at a ridiculous rate. They are reaping what they sow and I get to say "I told you so" to my local IMB competitor as I perform my best Gov. Dean Howard guffaw. Permalink

CAPUDO34 at 18:28 2008-06-25 said:

It was only a matter of time. Their continued aggressiveness in the alt-a & option arm market, even after the rest of the industry pulled back, finally bit them in the bEhind. It's annoying competing against one of the most irresponsible lenders since Countrywide. Give away the store with little-to-qualification at a ridiculous rate. They are reaping what they sow and I get to say "I told you so" to my local IMB competitor as I perform my best Gov. Dean Howard guffaw.

Are you saying you did refuse to sell those products because they are "irresponsible?" Irresponsible lender huh, I think almost every lender went out of control over the last few years, not just CW or IMB. Sure IMB does do a lot of volume and has probably taken much of your business to this day, but they were not any different to any other lender in terms of products.

I love when people come out of the woodworks after the fact and begin to point fingers when all of us were involved in the mortgage debacle some way or another. I'm not saying it is our fault, but we did participate in the ride. Permalink

Aristotle at 01:10 2008-06-26 said:

OK IndyMac employees, what are you seeing?

I went through the "S&L Crisis" during the 1990's and the employees could always tell when the FDIC or FSLIC was going to come in within a few weeks and shut them down.

Are there lots of FDIC people looking at your files and asking for information this week? Permalink

8bpChip at 07:53 2008-06-26 said:

It was only a matter of time. Their continued aggressiveness in the alt-a & option arm market, even after the rest of the industry pulled back, finally bit them in the bEhind. It's annoying competing against one of the most irresponsible lenders since Countrywide. Give away the store with little-to-qualification at a ridiculous rate. They are reaping what they sow and I get to say "I told you so" to my local IMB competitor as I perform my best Gov. Dean Howard guffaw.

Are you saying you did refuse to sell those products because they are "irresponsible?" Irresponsible lender huh, I think almost every lender went out of control over the last few years, not just CW or IMB. Sure IMB does do a lot of volume and has probably taken much of your business to this day, but they were not any different to any other lender in terms of products.

I love when people come out of the woodworks after the fact and begin to point fingers when all of us were involved in the mortgage debacle some way or another. I'm not saying it is our fault, but we did participate in the ride.

Please, put down the IndyMac Kool-Aid and get a grip. The difference between IndyMac and the rest of the industry is that the rest of the industry realized when to quit while IndyMac continued to charge ahead with their ridiculous product offerings. It gives me great joy to watch this sorry excuse of an alt-a lender get theirs. I sincerely hope every single Stated option arm they purchased blows up in their face. Also, I'm counting down the days until their stock gets De-Listed. It's trading at a $1.07 today. Uh oh, only 8 cents away from worthlessness! Let's GOOOO IndyMac! How LOOOWW can you GOOOO!

(P.S. Capudo34, I sure hope you weren't foolish enough to buy any of their stock. ;) ) Permalink

SubPrimeTime at 04:02 2008-07-05 said:

Today I heard my employer, Indymac Bank, was sold. I don't know the company that purchased it.

I'm not sure how the transition will occur or any details other than it's been sold. I assume I will find out more Monday when I go to work.

I heard this word of mouth from reliable co-worker. It does not come as a surprise to me. I doubt it's false but I personally have nothing to prove it's official.

Based on our recent stock price a number of people could have the potential to purchase it. Just needed to raid the Piggy Bank. Permalink

alphajej at 13:12 2008-07-07 said:

Indymac Issues Stakeholder Letter July 7th, 2008 Dear Indymac Stakeholders:

In this very difficult and challenging environment, any of the actions that we take to keep Indymac safe and sound unfortunately have negative consequences to some important constituency. As we stated in our financial update on May 12, 2008, we have been working with our investment bankers to raise additional capital. To-date, we have not been successful with these efforts, and, while we will continue these efforts with our bankers and others, we don’t expect to be able to raise capital until there is more stability and less uncertainty in the housing and mortgage markets. While some shareholders may believe it is in their best interests that we not raise capital right now given the significant dilution that it would cause, there are consequences of not being able to raise more capital and, therefore, actions that we now must take.

Given the continued downward trend in home prices and a resulting increase in our forecasted credit losses and the related downward trend in the pricing of all mortgage related assets in the capital markets, especially mortgage-backed securities where we have experienced significant rating agency downgrades this quarter, we expect our loss for the second quarter to be larger than Q108, but it is difficult at this time to be more precise given the significant uncertainty surrounding accounting estimates, fair value accounting and other accounting matters.

In light of the current environment and related deterioration of our financial position since last quarter, we have been working closely with our federal banking regulators with respect to the actions that they and we must take to meet our mutual goal of keeping Indymac safe and sound through this crisis period. In that respect, based on information we have provided to our regulators, they have advised us that we are no longer “well capitalized”, which we stated on May 12 was a possible scenario. Our regulators have also asked us to submit to them a new business plan for their review and approval, something on which we have been working with them for some time. We have agreed on the basic elements of the plan, and the regulators have directed us to begin executing on it. An important element of our plan is to improve our capital ratios. Without an external capital raise, the traditional way to improve safety and soundness is to sell assets and shrink the balance sheet, which in normal times generally has the effect of improving capital ratios and bolstering liquidity. Yet in this environment, where either there are no bids for most of IMB’s mortgage loans and securities or the bid/ask spreads are abnormally wide, “fire-selling” assets would actually deplete capital further. As a result, the most realistic and cost-effective way to shrink both our balance sheet and our servicing rights asset (which, as discussed in previous communications, is up against the regulatory cap limit), is to curtail most new loan production.

In addition to needing to shrink our assets to improve our capital ratios, we also need to do so to ensure that we maintain prudent operating liquidity. A consequence of falling below well-capitalized is that we are no longer permitted to accept new brokered deposits or renew or roll over existing ones, unless we get a waiver from the FDIC. While we have submitted a waiver application, it is uncertain as to whether such a waiver will be granted.

As a result of the above, we have made the difficult decision, effective July 7, 2008, that we will no longer accept any new loan submissions or rate locks in our retail and wholesale forward mortgage lending channels, except for our servicing retention channel. We plan to honor all of our existing rate-locked loans and will continue to fund these loans in the coming weeks. While the managers and employees in these units have worked incredibly hard, these units are not currently profitable due to the continuing erosion of the housing and mortgage markets. At the same time, these operations take up significant balance sheet capacity and “feed” growth in the servicing asset, an asset we need to shrink given its size relative to our existing capital.

In closing our forward mortgage business, we will refocus our lending efforts on supporting and building within regulatory constraints Financial Freedom, our reverse mortgage unit (FHA production only), and on continuing the retention activities associated with our servicing portfolio. Combined, we currently expect these units to produce roughly $5 billion to $10 billion per year of new FHA/GSE loans. Thus, our core business model will include (1) Financial Freedom, one of the largest reverse mortgage lenders in the Country; (2) a top ten mortgage loan servicing operation, with a solid retention production unit; and (3) a Southern California retail bank branch network, including 33 branches and roughly $18 billion in deposits, of which over 96% is fully covered by FDIC insurance. In addition, when this housing and mortgage crisis abates and we return to health, we would also hope to be an investor in mortgage loans and mortgage-backed securities and might re-enter the national forward mortgage production business with a low-cost, non-commissioned-based business model.

Unfortunately, the above actions will necessitate the reduction in our present workforce from approximately 7,200 to roughly 3,400 or so over the next couple of months, which should reduce our operating expenses by roughly 60%. We will retain about 1,100 employees in loan servicing in Kalamazoo and Austin; 350 in our servicing retention group in Irvine and Kansas City; 800 at Financial Freedom, primarily in Irvine, Sacramento, and Atlanta; 400 in our Southern California retail and web bank; 500 in portfolio management and administration, largely in Pasadena; and 250 in discontinued businesses. In building Indymac up from 4 employees in 1993 to its present size, we have had to retrench and then rebuild several times over the past 15 years, but clearly these are the largest and most difficult staff reductions we have ever had to make. If we had another alternative, we clearly would have chosen it, as we understand how painful these workforce reductions can be for the affected employees and their families. Given Indymac’s current financial position and these significant layoffs, I strongly believe it is appropriate that I further materially reduce my own compensation. As a result, I have requested of Indymac’s Board of Directors that they reduce my base salary by 50%.

With respect to severance, our policy has always been that the fair and right thing to do is to provide our departing employees with a generous severance program to ease their transition to the next stage of their career. Our severance program, which provided one month of pay and one month of Indymac-paid COBRA insurance coverage for each year of service, was clearly the most generous in the mortgage industry, if not among most of the Fortune 500. I very much regret that the reality today, however, is that we can no longer afford this program given our need to preserve capital and return to profitability. Therefore, we will be providing employees with a minimum 30-day notice of the termination of their employment (effectively, 30 days severance), with employees covered under the Federal WARN Act and similar state statutes (“WARN”) receiving 60 days of advance notice prior to the effective date of the their termination. Affected employees with five or more years of service will receive a minimum $20,000 severance, including any compensation payments made during the notice period.

With all of the above said, in this environment plans can change often and quickly (e.g. ability to raise capital and/or liquidity, regulatory actions, etc.). All we can do is continue to work hard and do our very best to keep Indymac safe and sound, so that we can rebuild our workforce and shareholder value when the housing and mortgage markets stabilize. We will be providing more information on our plans and prospects when we release Q208 earnings.

Very truly yours,

Michael W. Perry Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Permalink

SMonk432 at 17:03 2008-07-07 said:

Can we say GREED.. This is another case of the greed factor. Every major lender/bank/mortgage lender, pension plan etc, caused this mess we are in. Atleast hopefully some Indymac employees will walk away with some $$. They could be like the saps at Alliance Title/ Financial Title, who walked away with nada, no severance, no accrued vaca pay, nada zip. They got a one hours notice. Hasta la vista baby, and dont let the door ~ Permalink

FormerIMB-LO at 09:15 2008-07-08 said:

I got laid off back in January as Construction Lending shut down. I thought that IMB might weather this storm, as I knew a few of the senior managers and believed in their ability to right the ship. However, I'm not clear anymore. I don't believe greed was the reason for the downturn. IMB was a niche lender, as were many others, and in order to stay competitive in that niche, lenders frequently have to make loans they might not want to make. This is the way things always go. In the building business, developers buy up land and build homes with no thought of the downturn (or only when it's too late to avoid excessive standing inventory), then they fire-sale what they can't sell profitably and try to hold on, laying off thousands in the process. Boom boom boom bust wait, then start all over again. Permalink

fishorcutbait at 15:27 2008-07-08 said:

"If a loan is declined or funded, the Rate Lock Fee specific to the funded loan ... will be credited back to the Seller/Broker." :roll:

[size=18:c0fdad1e3e]CREDITED BACK[/size:c0fdad1e3e]

doesn't say anything about being REFUNDED BACK........... Permalink

wratgas at 16:59 2008-07-08 said:

FORMER IMB-LO "I don't believe greed was the reason for the downturn."

If you were one of the honest people at IMB, I commend you.

IMB knew exactly what they were doing. It was all about generating sales and bringing in income, regardless of how or to. They knew it and they just didnt forecast correctly when the ride would come to an end, and it always comes to an end.

QC was routinely forced to reduce/eliminate findings and water down reports to regulators. That came from the top down. Charlie Wlliams, head of internal audit, tried to warn MP, he was gone. Terry Hughes, General Council, could see the writing on the wall and he was gone. Michelle Leigh, head of Post QC tried to report the truth to regulators and was gone.

For MP and the rest of upper management it was all about sales/income and their precious market share. QC be damned. An industry that ignores QC to the extent that the mortgage industry did, and specifically IMB, deserves to be shut down. Instead of people dying because of lax QC, we have BKs and FC running rampant.

Reasonability tests on things like income were routinely overridden by sales mangement to make the deals go thru, regardless of how obviously ridiculous they were.

Were you at IMB Construction when the Florida land/swamp scheme went down? That was all about greed. Why didn't Jim Banks (I think that is his name) get fired over that? Permalink

Bankergal at 11:29 2008-07-09 said:

HOT OFF THE PRESS:

Prospect Mortgage to Acquire IndyMac Bancorp Mortgage Retail Branches Print article Refer to a friend © Business Wire 2008

2008-07-09 04:04:06 -

- Prospect Mortgage has signed an agreement to acquire the majority of IndyMac Bancorp's retail mortgage branches. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The transaction encompasses approximately 750 employees along with more than 60 branch offices which will be rebranded as Prospect Mortgage. John Johnston and Ron Bergum will remain in leadership roles with the retail branch group and report to Mark Filler, CEO of Prospect Mortgage.

"The IndyMac transaction benefits our loan officers, customers, sales managers and referral sources. This is growth for the right reasons, not just for the sake of growth," said Mr. Filler. "The IndyMac transaction will enable us to increase our investment and success in marketing, technology, and customer service levels."

With completion of the IndyMac transaction, Prospect Mortgage projects that it will become one of the largest independent retail mortgage companies in the country.

Prospect Mortgage

Established in 2006, Prospect Mortgage specializes in acquiring midsized residential lenders, providing them with capital, cost-efficiencies, and increased resources while maintaining a decentralized, entrepreneurial business model. Prospect is backed by Sterling Partners, a multibillion-dollar private equity fund based in Chicago and Baltimore. To learn more, visit www.prospectmtg.com.

Some products may not be available in all states. This is not a commitment to lend. Restrictions apply. All rights reserved. Users of this information should not assume that it remains effective at a later date. Programs (including, without limits, fees, rates, and features) are subject to change without notice.

This press release may contain forward-looking statements with respect to the Company's business, financial condition, results of operations, plans, objectives and future performance. Forward-looking statements, which may be based upon beliefs, expectations and assumptions of management and on information currently available to management, are generally identifiable by the use of words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "plan," "intend," "estimate," "may," "will," "would," "could," "should" or other similar expressions. Additionally, all statements in this document, including forward-looking statements, speak only as of the date they are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update any statement in light of new information or future events. A number of factors, many of which are beyond the ability of the Company to control or predict, could cause actual results to differ materially from those in its forward-looking statements, including, among others, changes in demand for mortgage loans, the Company's access to funding sources and the terms upon which it can obtain financing, the impact of economic slowdowns or recessions, management's ability to manage the Company's growth and planned expansion, competition in the Company's market, changes in government regulations, the impact of new legislation or court decisions restricting the activities of lenders or suppliers of credit in the Company's market and the inability of the Company to manage the risks associated with the foregoing as well as anticipated. These risks and uncertainties should be considered in evaluating forward-looking statements and undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. The Company does not undertake to up-date forward looking statements to reflect the impact of circumstances or events that arise after the date the forward looking statement are made.

Prospect Mortgage Jason Karpf, 818 Permalink

Aristotle at 16:37 2008-07-09 said:

Does anyone remember the long running gag on Saturday Night Live, when Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain was in a coma dying?

There was a gag line "Is he dead yet?"

In this case "Is it dead yet?" Permalink