IndyMac, one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, collapsed in July after depositors withdrew $1.55 billion in a two-week period. In the months before Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. failed, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation could often find buyers for crumbling banks, but IndyMac collapsed so rapidly that the government was stuck with it.
In August the FDIC circulated IndyMac’s books among potential buyers. Regulators had signaled that “alternative sources of capital to the banking system [are] desirable,” Glotzer says. That piqued the interest of Dune Capital Management L.P., which organized a consortium of bidders that also included Paulson & Co., Inc., and J.C. Flowers & Co. Inc., among others.
