WaMu Bankruptcy Judge to Approve $7 Billion Reorganization ...
February 17, 2012, 2:34 PM EST
By Steven Church
(Updates with shareholder?s comment in fifth paragraph.)
Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) ? Washington Mutual Inc. won court approval for a $7 billion reorganization plan that resolves some legal claims related to the biggest U.S. bank to fail.
Creditors may be paid the first chunk of money as early as March 8 once a deadline passes for shareholders to decide whether they will waive their right to sue over the collapse of WaMu?s former bank, said Fred Hodara, a lawyer for the creditors? committee.
?It should be confirmed immediately so stakeholders can get a distribution,? U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath said today in Wilmington, Delaware. Walrath said she will sign a final order approving the plan after wording changes are submitted by company lawyers.
The approval followed a deal struck this week to allow common shareholders to split ownership of the only unit of WaMu that will emerge from bankruptcy, a reinsurance company valued at about $140 million. Even with the deal, shareholders will still lose more than other WaMu investors, Edgar Sargent, with the law firm Susman Godfrey LLP, said in court.
?Getting to a recovery for shareholders was not an easy process,? Florin Matache, a shareholder who estimates he lost about $10,000 on WaMu common stock purchased before the bankruptcy, said in an interview after the hearing. ?I am not sure the struggle was worth it.?
Break Even
Matache, a 34-year-old pharmacist from Roseville, California, said he tried to cut his losses after the Chapter 11 filing by buying WaMu debt securities that had dropped in value. Should the reinsurance company be worth $140 million, as WaMu financial advisers estimated, Matache expects to break even on his post-bankruptcy investments.
Bondholders, some of whom bought WaMu?s debt for pennies on the dollar after the company?s 2008 collapse and bankruptcy filing, will be repaid in full plus interest, according to court documents.
WaMu, based in Seattle, filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 26, 2008, the day after its banking unit was taken over by regulators and sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for $1.9 billion. Washington Mutual Bank had more than 2,200 branches and $188 billion in deposits.
Creditors will collect more than $7 billion, mainly from about $4 billion in cash that WaMu had on deposit with the banking unit bought by JPMorgan and from tax refunds. The cash and the refunds were split with JPMorgan and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to settle a dispute about who owned the assets and who should be held responsible for WaMu?s collapse.
Shared Recovery
Today?s approval of WaMu?s plan came after a group of creditors known as the TPS Consortium, who hold securities that resemble preferred shares, agreed to switch their vote and support the proposal.
In return for their support, the group?s members will share stock in the reinsurance company that would exit bankruptcy under the plan. Those creditors and another group of investors who hold the same securities will share $18 million provided by JPMorgan.
The deal removed the last major objection to the plan, WaMu attorney Brian Rosen, with the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, said in court. He compared a small stack of objections for this version of the plan, the seventh, to the hundreds of written critiques of the previous plan.
?It was like the winner of the ?Biggest Loser? contest,? Rosen said, referring to the reality-television show in which obese people try to lose weight.
The bankruptcy case is In re Washington Mutual Inc., 08-12229, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington).
?Editors: Stephen Farr, Glenn Holdcraft
To contact the reporter on this story: Steven Church in Wilmington at schurch3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Pickering at jpickering@bloomberg.net
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Source: http://g7finance.com/investing/wamu-bankruptcy-judge-to-approve-7-billion-reorganization/
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Regarding Frankenstein, Levy is planning to use motion-capture SimulCam (the same process he used on Real Steel) to film the monsters:
It?s an interesting approach, but it worked splendidly on Real Steel.? As for when production might begin on Frankenstein, Levy admitted that the production start on another Frankenstein project has affected his iteration. He and Fox are making sure their Frankenstein is just right before it goes forward:
Previous reports claimed that Fox was wary of the large budget for the project, but Levy says the concern has more to do with finding the right cast:
As for Fantastic Voyage, Levy says they?re currently making script tweaks, but he?s got a very specific vision for the finished film:
Though Frankenstein and Fantastic Voyage have been on Levy?s radar for a while now, his next project might actually be a comedy that he only recently began working on. While on the set of Neighborhood Watch, which he?s producing, Levy struck up a rapport with star Vince Vaughn who pitched him a comedy called Interns that would reteam Vaughn with Owen Wilson:
The pic would see Vaughn and Wilson as friends who get laid off and decide to become interns at a Google-like startup. They soon discover that they?re completely lost in a sea of fresh-faced twentysomethings who know infinitely more about the digital world than they do. It?s material that?s definitely in Vaughn and Wilson?s wheelhouse, and something I?d love to see them hit out of the park. Levy revealed that if they come up with a great script, they could possibly shoot the film this summer:
:02 Update on Frankenstein: ?I?ve been tinkering/toying with both Frankenstein and Fantastic Voyage. The teams that I?ve been prepping are the same that I did Real Steel with. Both movies would involve some of the same technology. In the case of Frankenstein, my whole approach is based on a mo-cap SimulCam playback so that it?s not a dude with scars on his face. It?s not just kind of latex and a costume; it would be a motion-capture performance of the monster?I can give away maybe not too much by saying there?s more than one in our version?and then I would go to Europe, shoot the movie, do scenes with the real actors and I would be able to see the motion-captured monster in real time due to SimulCam, so yes that is our technological VFX paradigm for Frankenstein.?
2:23 Talks about where they?re at in the development phase of Frankenstein and how I, Frankenstein has affected their film: ?Frankenstein is a great script. Everyone now knows, because people have seen Chronicle, that Max Landis is a hell of a goddamn writer and his script for Frankenstein is awesome. Here?s what doesn?t help: there?s another movie that is already shooting called I, Frankenstein? It?s a wildly different movie, but in the culture it?s another Frankenstein movie, it?s gonna come out next year. So if anything, that movie has kind of raised the bar for the studio and I to cast the living hell out of our Frankenstein. That script is ready to rock, I am ready to rock on that script, but as was reported it?s not a small budget. My Frankenstein, it ain?t gonna get done well and the way I would insist on doing it for $35 million. So anytime you?re in like $70-$80 million for a movie, you?re really thinking about ?Well who are these two guys?? in our case it?s Igor and Victor Frankenstein, ?What?s the juicy pairing that makes that a good bet? That makes that financial bet smart and worth it?? because I am in the business of not squandering the money the studios give me to make movies. I haven?t let them down yet, I don?t wanna let them down. So the [initial] report was off in that it wasn?t about ?Oh no we got the budget to Frankenstein and we don?t wanna make it?, it was more like ?Okay if that?s the budget, we?ve gotta make sure we cast it really, really right? and so that?s the moment we?re in.?












As the football season ends, the NFL Scouting Combine symbolizes a new beginning for potential NFL rookies.? Last year, discussions at the NFL?s Scouting Combine revolved around a common theme: the lockout and CBA negotiations.? Now that this issue has been resolved, things should return to business as usual.? Although agents are required to attend Friday?s agent meeting to maintain NFLPA certification (or attend a seminar in San Diego this spring), this is hardly the reason we attend the Scouting Combine.