U-turns on rights issues, never-ending writedowns – there’s been plenty of badly handled mishaps to choose from.

But even by the low standards of the banking sector, Bradford & Bingley (LON:BB) has been particularly hapless. In fact, its latest bombshell managed to wipe £2.8bn off the value of the UK’s six biggest banks, even though B&B itself only started the day with a market cap of barely half a million.

So how did such a small bank cause such a big reaction?

The reasons behind Bradford & Bingley’s shocking share price slump

Bradford & Bingley has had a dreadful few months. In the middle of April, rumours arose that the bank was on the verge of launching a rights issue. At the time, B&B denied it strongly. However, within a few days, Royal Bank of Scotland had announced its plans for a rights issue, which was closely followed by HBoS.

With the floodgates open, B&B apparently changed its mind in mid-May, saying it would be raising £300m from shareholders, with new shares placed at 82p a pop, way below the share price at the time.

At the time there was no suggestion of a profit warning, but with the housing market deteriorating, and management under a cloud because of the U-turn, investors were clearly worried. B&B’s share price slumped as investors fretted over the state of the bank’s finances, until on Friday, B&B was trading at just 88.5p a share.

Then, on Sunday, chief executive Steve Crawshaw, whose position was probably already untenable, resigned due to health problems. Then yesterday, the bank finally issued the much-expected profits warning.

And what a warning it was. The group plunged into an £8m loss in the four months to April, compared to a £108m profit for the same period in 2007. Profit margins have dived as funding costs grew, while bad debts have rocketed – more on that in a moment. The group also wrote down a further £89m in sub-prime related assets.

The good news – what little there was – was that US private equity group TPG has picked up a 23% stake in the bank for £179m. But even so, the rights issue had to be entirely revised. Under the original deal, if the share price had fallen below 82p, there would have been no incentive for anyone to buy into the stock and the underwriters (UBS and Citi, the investment banks who undersigned the deal) would likely have been left on the hook for the whole £300m.

Obviously, this wasn’t something either UBS or Citi would have appreciated. Reports in the papers suggest that they might even have found reason to pull out if necessary. So the deal has been changed. Shareholders will now be offered 19 shares for every 25 owned, at the price of 55p a share. Rather than raising £300m, B&B aims to raise £258m.

But why did the other bank shares fall?

The chaos and the grim news on profits sent B&B’s shares diving 24% to 67p, and it’s certainly a messy situation. But why did other banks take such fright? For example, HBoS sank 10%, while Alliance & Leicester fell 5.2%.

Well, the main worries for other banks were in B&B’s trading update. The group – which is Britain’s biggest buy-to-let mortgage lender – saw bad debts on its buy-to-let mortgages jump by a staggering 50% between the start of the year and the end of April. More than 3,000 of B&B’s buy-to-let customers are now at least three months behind in their mortgage payments, from less than 2,000 at the start of 2008. Buy-to-let accounts for nearly 60% of the bank’s mortgage book.

Things will only get worse, said the bank. “The tougher economic environment will continue to push arrears beyond the current level.” As Sandy Chen at Panmure Gordon put it: “This is not the bottom. The UK housing market – not just buy-to-let – is turning south.”

And although the bank has been raising its mortgage costs, it’s not seeing the benefit feed through to its profits, because it can’t write enough of the new mortgages. As Derek Chambers of Standard & Poor’s tells The Telegraph: “I think the hope had been at Bradford & Bingley, probably at HBoS as well, that as they re-priced new mortgages they’d be able to pass on these costs.” But in fact, they are “stuck with more mortgages at low rates which are probably low margin or even negative margin, and they’re not able to free up capital to lend at the new higher rates.”

The trouble is, this is just the beginning of the housing market upheaval. The Bank of England reported yesterday that in April mortgage approvals hit their lowest level since the Bank started recording the data in 1993. Capital Economics reckons the data suggest we could be looking at “house price falls that are well into double digits by the end of the year”.

So all of the banks can expect their bad debts to rise from here on in, for quite some time. Any shareholders in B&B, RBS, or HBoS pondering whether to buy into their rights issues needs to forget their current shareholding and ask themselves: “Given the choice of all the stocks in the stock market, would I put my money in a bank right now?”

And for anyone with anything less than the strongest risk appetite, then in the current economic climate, the answer has to be no.

Source: Why the Buy-to-Let Carnage is Just Beginning

Nicholas Nassim Taleb coined the term Black Swan to explain how massive unforeseen events have the greatest impact on markets. But only the most naïve and optimistic of investors was not expecting further fallout from the abominable banking sector.

Bradford & Bingley (B&B), like Northern Rock, RBS, Alliance & Leicester, Barclays and HBOS before it, is in the spotlight and in a lot of trouble.

The company has launched a £258m rights issue at an offer price of 55p a share. They are set to issue a profit warning. Steven Crawshaw has stepped down as CEO. And they have agreed to sell 23% of their shares to Texas Pacific Group (TPG) Capital, a US private equity firm for £179 million.

This “perfect storm” hit the firm so hard that the FSA were forced to come in and suspend trading in the shares.

The downturn in the buy-to-let housing market means the UK’s eighth largest bank, from £3 billion in 2006, now is worth a mere £404m — less than Dignity funeral care. Which is shocking, viewed in isolation.

But, I’m pretty blasé about all of these rights issues and share plunges. Anything happening in the banking sector is a write-off (pun intended). Regular readers know that I’ve no interest in bottom-fishing for ‘bargain’ banks.

Despite my antipathy, I have been constantly advised to pile into banking shares. In the past 3 months I’ve been told:

To buy Barclays at 510p; the shares are now 363p;
To buy RBS at 330p; now 222p;
And to buy HBOS at 497p; now 368p.

All three tips were made, among other things, on the basis of big dividend yields, which seem to cover a multitude of sins.

Except they don’t. All three tips have incurred a greater capital loss than their total annual dividend payout would compensate for. And, none of these three firms is paying a dividend in cash. They’re paying them in shares instead.

This only serves to hurt the per share profitability, which lowers the already low share price… not what the dividend hunters signed up for.

The world’s worst stock tipper

I will no doubt receive another tip for Bradford & Bingley. Why do the tippers persevere with banks?

Because the culprit ultimately responsible for all of these tips is still at large, pushing bank stocks like never before.

Let me now reveal to you who that culprit is. This is today’s the print-out from my Bloomberg terminal, objectively ranking stocks by their value credentials:

1. Bradford & Bingley, Score: 99:89
2. Alliance & Leicester, Score: 83.96
3. HBOS, Score: 80:86
4. Barclays, Score: 78.68
5. RBS, Score: 76.42

Blame the machines.

Across the entire UK stock market, banks are the five best value investments around today. And it’s not just Bloomberg… running any value ‘stock screen’ from Reuters, to Digital Look, to Zacks, to ADVFN produces the same result. This is what every investor and fund manager has been seeing on their screens since late-October.

In objective terms, these are the shares to buy. But anyone who’s been following this advice over the last 12 months has lost, and lost big.

There are two ways to look at investments, bottom-up and top-down.

Bottom-up investing uses stock-screens — systems that zero-in on company fundamentals. Think of it as tunnel-vision investing. In a bull-run, it is a great way to buy stocks. I used to build stock screens for a critically-acclaimed investment service, so I can personally testify to how effective they can be.

Top-down investing is quite different. This method is far more big picture. The first question is not ‘What company should I look at?’ It’s ‘What assets should I look at?’

Top-down investors are not only looking at numbers, but at sentiment and market opportunities outside of a machine’s scope.

While neither method is perfect, in a market downturn it is essential to think big.

Bottom-up investing can lag reality — in the 2000 bear market, stock screeners were picking out the companies that had fallen hard and were more value trap than value opportunity. The same thing is happening here. A system is not a substitute for common sense.

If the market falls by 20%, you have to sit up, take notice and, depending on the portfolio, take action.

The fallout was an opportunity to re-evaluate and find safe-havens for your money. Those who did this have profited in the last six months. Those who had well diversified portfolios in a variety of sectors have probably broken even.

Those who held the ‘good value’ banks, house-builders and retail stocks must now take drastic action to pull things back.

Theo Casey

Source: Bradford And Bingley’s White Swan Event

Good day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! And welcome to June! Hey! June is busting out all over, all over the meadow and the field… Buds are busting out of bushes and the rompin’ river pushes every little wheel that wheels beside the mill! (And you thought I was just a rocker!) We are having network problems this morning, as some heavy storms ripped through St. Louis on Saturday night. So, the Techie people need to come in and get stuff re-booted, etc. This may go out late… And it may not… At this point, I at least have my laptop working!

Well… Friday saw little movement in the currencies… As I signed off I had told you that maybe someone had said “enough” with the euro (EUR) selling… As the day went on, it certainly looked like that had happened, given the euro’s rise to 1.5550, after looking up to 1.55 early in the morning.

There’s been a return to risk aversion overnight, as some news from the United Kingdom has reignited the fears that the banks may still be sitting on a ton of bad debt… Of course, as Pfennig readers, you already know this, as I’ve told you over and over again there are many more “risk events” for the markets to digest.

Here’s the skinny on the U.K. news… The United Kingdom’s largest lender of buy-to-let mortgages, Bradford & Bingley, came forward to reveal that they had booked a pre-tax net loss of 8 million pounds (after accounting for reductions in the value of its structured investment assets. They also announced that they were going to restructure, and that TPG, Inc. would invest about 179 million pounds.

Well… There you have it… More melting of the U.K. mortgage meltdown… But, hear me now and listen to me later, this isn’t isolated to the United Kingdom.

This is a Big Central Bank meeting week around the world, with the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) meeting Tuesday, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) meeting Wednesday, the Bank of England (BOE) and European Central Bank (ECB) meeting on Thursday. I don’t expect any of these to move rates one way or another at this time. There’s a tiny light shining on the RBA to raise rates, but I think that will come at a later date.

As always, with an unchanged rate environment, the press conference following the meetings will be the more important of the events. I expect the RBA, and ECB to remain hawkish with their intentions to fight inflation, while the BOE and RBNZ are grasping at straws.

The ECB has to deal with the fastest inflation in its 10-year history… That’s not a good thing folks… Not for a Central Bank, whose mandate is to provide price stability. The economy may be cooling, which I’ll talk about in a minute, but inflation is rising – which means rates remain at current levels, or may even go higher as the summer days get hotter.

With the return to risk aversion overnight, the Japanese yen (JPY) has rebounded along with Swiss francs (CHF). It will be interesting to see if the risk aversion can set its teeth into all the “euphoria” surrounding the U.S. markets these days.

The Eurozone economy seems to be slowing down, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. I’ve said all along to expect a slowing of the economy… But not a complete shut-down/recession, and this “slowing” might just be what’s weighing on the euro these days. There’s an important thing to remember about the euro… It’s the “offset” currency to the dollar. So… Look at the two currencies… The dollar, with all the awful fundamentals, a recession, low yields, a war, etc. and then the euro, with a slowing economy… Eventually, the markets will return to the underlying trend.

But first, we might have to endure some euro weakness. But, remember, the dollar has all the bad fundamentals… Sort of like a gauntlet to get through… And while it’s getting beaten, the offset currency is likely to be in favor.

OK… A reader sent me a note about the one-year auction of Treasury Bills, and said, “This is scary isn’t it?” OK… Here’s the skinny on that… You see U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson is feeling like he’s been “through the desert on a horse with no name” these days. The Treasury is going to issue one-year T-Bills tomorrow for the first time since 2001. With the expanding budget deficit, they have no other choice. The cheese that binds here is the fact that Paulson is indicating that the Fed Reserve, who in the past, had been a regular purchaser of the debt, may not be willing to do so… You see, the Fed is focusing on taking on all that bad debt from mortgage lenders… (Can you say, “The Fed’s focus is all screwed up?”… I knew you could!)

Want some proof that our deficit situation has become completely out of control… How about this little ditty… In the first five months of 2008, the Treasury sold $1.4 trillion of bills, an increase of 36% from the same period last year. Oh, but don’t let that get in the dollar bulls’ way of buying dollars! Deficits don’t matter, right? HOGWASH! You and I know that! But these guys running the country don’t believe it… And that’s a real shame, or sham… Pick one, either one applies!

OK… I have to spend a minute talking about the announced investigation of the CFTC (Commodities Futures). A lot of people believe the investigation will reveal some bad stuff being done to push up the price of oil… Now, I’m not going to sit here and pretend to believe there’s nothing to that… But come on! If the authorities really thought they were going to find something noteworthy, do you think they would announce to the public they were going to investigate? Wouldn’t you want to sneak around and zip the lips until you had the thieves?

I think that this has more “calm the nerves of the public” to it, than it has “to catch a thief”. I mean, come one, we don’t build refineries; we don’t drill where we KNOW there is oil; we haven’t done a darn thing about alternative fuel, despite knowing that we’ve needed to do something since 1973; and we drive gas guzzling cars… But wouldn’t it be better to “blame” someone else for the fact that gas is $4 a gallon? Let’s go after the commodities guys… There’s got to be something there!

It’s supply and demand folks… We have two large countries with billions of people that now demand oil that never really had a demand before… China and India… Take that supply and demand, and mix in a falling dollar, and you have high oil prices.

OK… Today, the data cupboard will show us the color of the ISM Manufacturing Index. You may recall this index has been holding out below the line in the sand of 50, which indicates contraction or expansion, for the past four months. The experts believe the index will have inched up to 48.5 in May – still below 50 – and that should weigh on the dollar a bit today.

We’ll have some other minor reports as the week goes on, leading into the Friday Jobs Jamboree… But I’ll talk more about the Jobs Jamboree as we get nearer to Friday.

The Aussie dollar (AUD), which has been the belle of the ball lately, showed some pimples this morning, after a report showed that retail sales in Australia had unexpectedly declined. I wouldn’t let my shorts get all bunched up over this. As I always say… One swallow does not make a summer… And this is the first “soft” economic report we’ve seen from the land down under. I don’t think we’ll see the RBA back off the rate hikes either!

Currencies today 6/2/08: A$ .9555, kiwi .7850, C$ 1.0045, euro 1.5550, sterling 1.9625, Swiss .96, ISK 75, rand 7.7175, krone 5.12, SEK 6.0175, forint 155.33, zloty 2.1750, koruna 16.15, yen 104.90, baht 32.58, sing 1.3630, HKD 7.8040, INR 42.35, China 6.9325, pesos 10.33, BRL 1.6240, dollar index 72.97, Oil $125.81, Silver $16.86, and Gold… $892.10

That’s it for today… My long time friend and colleague, Chris Gaffney, traveled to San Diego with his lovely family this past weekend to run in a marathon there. I marvel at his determination to do these marathons. Yesterday was darling daughter Dawn’s husband, Jerry’s birthday. We all celebrated at little buddy Alex’s baseball game! Alex just finished four games in five days… That’s crazy! Congratulations to Alex, as he just finished 6th grade! School’s out for Summer! School’s out for ever! OK, enough Alice Cooper for a Monday morning! Kristin’s back from Cancun today! It will be interesting to get her take of the conference! OK… Enough! Time to go! I hope you have a Marvelous Monday!

P.S. To get The Daily Reckoning sent directly to your inbox, sign up for our free email newsletter, or if you prefer to use RSS, subscribe to the Daily Reckoning RSS feed.

Source: Reigniting Fears

Early last week, the U.S. Department of Energy said that it expects average monthly gasoline prices to peak at $3.60 a gallon this spring, since that high price will serve to curb demand and keep prices in check.[although even the Energy Department report said that before prices level off there could be interim price spikes that will take pump prices up over the $4 a gallon level].

With crude oil having spiked above the $112 a barrel level last week on reports of declining oil supplies, grandstanding politicos on both sides of the aisle took the opportunity to bash each other’s energy policies [Don’t tell me … it must be an election year]. Seeming to add credibility to the Energy Department’s prognostication was last week’s weekly inventory report that showed that demand is waning – ostensibly because record gas prices now stand more than 55 cents a gallon higher than they were at this time last year.

But here’s the problem. The Energy Department is wrong. Thankfully, that’s not true of Money Morning. Since its inception last year, Money Morning has repeatedly predicted incrementally higher prices for crude oil and gasoline. Invariably, these predictions have proved themselves correct. And we’ve done more than just make predictions: We’ve also outlined investment opportunities that would allow investors to capitalize on this advance in energy prices.

In December, for the first time ever, Money Morning Investment Director Keith Fitz-Gerald publicly predicted that oil prices would reach $187 a barrel within three years. In mid-March, he reiterated this projection [accompanied by several suggested ways for investors to profit from this powerful trend]. Not only has this forecast continued to receive widespread play on energy- and investment-related Web sites, we’re starting to see similar “me too” predictions being made by some the energy sector’s heavyweight experts: Literally only days after Money Morning reiterated its forecast, Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) said that crude oil prices would reach $175 a barrel in the next two years.

This underscores one of the key mandates for Money Morning. While it’s true that we’re the hottest global-investing news service in the market today, this case study demonstrates that we’re more than just a purveyor of news. Our role is to provide our regular readers and subscribers with the news, of course, but it’s more important for us to explain just what the news actually means. To that end, look for us to:

• Put the news in context.
• To describe how the issue at hand fits in with the handful of powerful global trends that we’ve ferreted out and identified as the top ones that you need to follow if you’re to succeed and profit.
• To stay ahead of the crowd by projecting the “end game” – the outcome – for these top trends.
• And, finally, to research and highlight investment opportunities that are the best-positioned to benefit from these trends, meaning these represent some of the best profit opportunities in the market today [Editor’s Note: If this investing strategy appeals to you, it’s well-worth checking out our affiliated monthly newsletter that maintains several portfolios of stocks and funds chosen using these guidelines. New subscribers get a free copy of investment guru Jim Rogers’ new best-seller, "A Bull in China."]

Stay tuned: We’ll continue to follow the oil-and-gasoline saga as it unfolds, and we’ll continue to find ways for investors to profit from this and other top global trends.

Last Week’s Market Action

If you’re of a certain age, surely you remember some of the marketing “slogans” airlines used to burnish their brand names and, hopefully, to attract passengers. attract passengers.

After all, whatever happened to: “We Earn our Wings Everyday,” or “Fly the Friendly Skies,” or even “Something Special in the Air?”

Last week, however, the more appropriate taglines may have well have been: “We No Longer Overlook Safety,” or “Enjoy Your Stay in the Updated Airport Concourse,” or even better “When the FAA Talks, We Now Listen.”

As if the escalating gasoline prices have not caused enough hardships for the airlines, in recent weeks, they seemed to realize that they actually are required to abide by government safety regulations. Just last week, American Airlines Inc. (AMR) canceled more than 3,000 flights, thus, inconveniencing an estimated 250,000 travelers because a little faulty wiring “may” cause fires in certain aircraft. While some analysts were astonished at the lapse in judgment exercised by AMR’s airline management, others believed this to be classic bureaucratic overreaction due to previous lax oversight. In any case, the airlines undoubtedly will see their future earnings suffer and ticketed customers will experience extended delays [forcing them to seek out the closest Chili’s Bar & Grill inside the airline terminal - at least perhaps representing a boon for the earnings for that company].

Shares of WaMu soared 29% higher Monday on the rumor, which pulled most financial stocks along for the ride. It was the biggest gain for WaMu shares in 25 years. Indeed, it does sounds like a big gain, until you realize the stock has plunged 75% in value over the past year.

Meanwhile, TPG is a premiere private equity firm (well connected with the Bush family). Surely they wouldn’t be putting their hard-earned cash to work in a shaky bank. Right?

The reality is that TPG is hardly spending paper-money – that is to say actual cash – on this deal. Like so many other private equity outfits, hedge funds and other “distressed asset” investors, TPG’s equity capital is highly leveraged up. They’re investments are typically leveraged 10 to 1… 25 to 1…perhaps even 100 to 1. Who knows? So TPG is buying with “plastic” not paper money – just like so many Americans do at the mall.

Buy me US$7 billion worth of WaMu shares…and charge it please!

WaMu needs the cash – after reporting US$3 billion in mortgage loan losses and other assorted (or sordid) asset write offs. That’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering total of US$232 billion (and still counting) in world-wide financial sector losses suffered so far in this credit crunch market shock.

WaMu shareholders should at least feel somewhat relived, even though their existing ownership interest in the bank will be sharply diluted. The alternative however could be much worse.

The good news for other investors – or for would-be bargain shoppers – in the financial sector is that this deal is another signal that the “all’s-clear” has been sounded in the global banking sector.

Don’t get me wrong: There will still be PLENTY of losses recorded this quarter, next quarter, and beyond. The credit crunch isn’t over yet. Mortgage rates are still uncomfortably high. And who knows how much lower home prices will go – triggering even more loan defaults and foreclosures ahead.

Still, it’s worth remembering that the stock market is a “discounting mechanism.” Share prices often bottom well ahead of the fundamentals. In fact, the S&P 500 Index already suffered a decline of nearly 19% from its October 2007 high, to the March low, so the benchmark blue-chip stock index may already be three-fourths of the way through this bear market.

Historically speaking, the average U.S. bear market since 1940 lasted about 13 months. Interestingly, on average 74% of the bear market decline was over (in terms of time) by the time the market crossed the -20% mark. Also, there have been quite a few market corrections that stopped just short of the down-20% threshold that commonly defines a bear market.

The bulls are crossing their fingers that last week’s rally was something more than just another dead-cat bounce. It certainly looks to me like this rally might have more legs than previous upside moves that proved to be false-starts.

The question now is: Should bullish investors buy with paper or plastic?

MIKE BURNICK, Senior Editor & Global Market Analyst

• Boeing Co. (BA) delayed the delivery of its 787 Dreamliner again yesterday (Wednesday), this time until the third quarter of 2009. It’s the third postponement in six months. The company said it would deliver just 25 planes next year, less than a quarter of what had originally been planned.

• Citigroup Inc. (C) is planning to sell $12 billion of loans at a loss to Apollo Management LP, Blackstone Group LP and TPG Inc., a person briefed on the matter told Bloomberg News. The loans are part of the $43 billion in financing that Citigroup agreed to provide for leveraged buyouts last year before credit markets froze.

• United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) cut its profit guidance for the year from between 94 and 98 cents a share to 86 or 87 cents. The company, which carries products that amount to about 5% of gross domestic product each year, cited lower volume and higher fuel costs as the biggest reasons for declining profit.

• The world’s largest air carrier, American Airlines – principal subsidiary of AMR Corp. (AMR) – canceled 1,000 flights yesterday (Wednesday) to reinspect jets. The cancellations affected more than 45% of its scheduled flights, Bloomberg reported, and stranded an estimated 11,000 travelers. The company said to expect more flight cancellations this week.

• Citing rapid growth in China and increasing demand for loans, Industrial & Commerce Bank of China (IBCB) said it expects first-quarter profit to soar 50%. IBCB is the world’s largest bank by market value. So far this year, ICBC has gained 5.2% in Hong Kong this year, compared with a 13.8% drop in the benchmark Hang Seng Index, Bloomberg reported.

• Hershey Trust Co., primary shareholder in The Hershey Co. (HSY), announced its Chief Executive Robert Vowler would retire in April 2009, Bloomberg News reported. Vowler has held the position for 12 years. Vincent Rudisill, the trust’s chief investment officer, will assume CEO duties.

• Crude oil for May delivery hit a new intraday high yesterday (Wednesday). It increased $2.37, or 2.2%, to close at $110.87 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier in the day, it hit a new intraday high of $112.21 a barrel after the Energy Information Administration announced U.S. stockpiles of crude fell to 316 million barrels in the week ended April 4, MarketWatch reported.

• U.S. wholesale inventories increased 1.1% in February, more than had been forecast. The increase was due to a 0.8% decline in sales for the same period. “Supply is starting to run ahead of demand and that could mean slower growth and also slower inflation further on down the line,” Jonathan Basile, an economist at Credit Suisse Holdings in New York, told Bloomberg News.

Seattle-based WaMu, as the savings and loan is often called, raised the capital by issuing 176 million new shares at $8.75 per share, a 33% discount to Monday’s closing price of $13.15. It also issued $5.5 billion in convertible preferred shares, the company said in a statement today.

Private equity firm TPG Inc. purchased $2 billion of the new securities. Current WaMu institutional investors mostly purchased the remainder.

The company also announced it would reduce its quarterly dividend rate to $0.01 per common share from its most recent rate of $0.15 per common share. The dividend reduction is expected to preserve approximately $490 million of capital annually.

“We’re very pleased that TPG and these major investors have expressed their confidence in WaMu’s underlying value and its growth potential,” said WaMu Chairman and CEO Kerry Killinger in a statement. “This substantial new capital – along with the other steps we are announcing today – will position us for a return to profitability as these elevated credit costs subside. With the support of these investors, we have every confidence in our ability to deal with today’s market conditions and restore shareholder value.”

WaMu is the latest financial firm to seek an outside capital infusion due to heavy subprime-related losses. For the fourth quarter, the firm took its first loss in 10 years with $3 billion in write-downs due to mortgage and loan losses. The company announced another $1.1 billion lost for the first quarter.

“It’s dilutive for shareholders on a massive basis, so it’s not great for the company, but it’s great for the system that capital can be raised during these stressful times,” Vincent Farrell, a principal at New York-based Scotsman Capital Management LLC, said on Bloomberg Radio.

WaMu is the sixth largest U.S. bank, based on bank deposit assets, with a 3.2% share behind Bank of America Corp. (BAC), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Wachovia Corp. (WB), Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) and Citigroup Inc. (C), Chief Executive Officer Kerry Killinger said in a Jan. 29 investor conference. WaMu had $194.3 billion in deposits as of Dec. 31, Bloomberg News reported.

Shares of WaMu dropped $1.34, a 10.19% decline, to close at $11.81.

Source:http://www.moneymorning.com/2008/04/08/washington-mutual-slashes-dividend-cuts-jobs/