They’re BAAAAACK: The CIT Takeover Of OneWest Bank

 

Wow. I mean. Just, wow.

You gotta love these guys.

Two phrases came to mind when I read the headline today about CIT Group taking over OneWest Bank.

First: “History does not repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme.” and second: “Madness consists of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

The casual reader of financial headlines will neither recognize nor care about this acquisition by a middle-market business lender (CIT Group) of a California retail branch banking institution (OneWest).

But it’s not the relatively anonymous companies that matter, but rather the people behind the takeover, and the historical provenance of the companies, that matters. This acquisition involves some of the key chess pieces of the 2008 Crisis and the worst excesses of that time. Let me go through some of the key names and highlights.

OneWest Bank – This is really IndyMac bank with a new name.

“A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet.”

You haven’t heard of IndyMac?

IndyMAC was kind of a ground zero mortgage lender in the 2007/2008 time period. Before failing, it was the seventh largest mortgage originator in the United States, and when it was taken over by the FDIC in July 2008 it was the fourth largest bank failure in history.

Of course it was originally founded by the later notorious Countrywide founder Angelo Mozilo, who spun off IndyMac as an independent company in 1997.

IndyMac did the usual thing as everyone else, borrowing with short-term debt, and lending out in the form of illiquid dicey mortgages.

IndyMac in particular was a leader in the intermediate “Alt-A” mortgage lending segment – mortgages too risky to be considered ‘Prime,’ but not entirely as shaky as Sub-prime either.

OneWest Bank became a newly formed bank in March 2009 when it took over the remains of IndyMac, via an FDIC auction of the failed mortgage lender.

Leading up to this transaction, the CEO of OneWest is Steve Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner and member of the management committee.

Prior to taking over OneWest, Mnuchin led Dune Capital with other Goldman partners who had made their reputations and fortunes investing in the distressed assets of the Resolution Trust Corporation, the government’s response to the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1980s.