EDITOR'S NOTE: In September, on the first anniversary of Washington Mutual’s closure, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported that as executives fought to sell the bank during its final days, regulators undercut those efforts by signaling to bidders that the bank would soon be seized and sold at a much lower price. Now, further investigation reveals that, contrary to regulators’ assertions at the time of the seizure, WaMu had sufficient liquidity and capital to meet regulatory standards and survive. Why, then, was it shuttered?

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in late September, a year and two days after regulators closed Washington Mutual, the bank’s former leaders gathered for an improbable, and tragic, reunion at a Seattle restaurant.

Among those present: Lou Pepper, the CEO who guided WaMu through the 1980s, and Kerry Killinger, the CEO who presided over both its vast expansion in the 1990s and its later deep dive into risky mortgage lending.

They came to honor a widely respected WaMu veteran who had been let go this year after decades at the bank. Just 10 days earlier, wracked in part by his family’s growing financial pressures, he took his own life at his Seattle home, according to a police report. He left behind a family and scores of colleagues who revered him. (Out of respect for the family, the Puget Sound Business Journal is not publishing his name.)

For nearly two hours at the memorial, speakers shared memories of the man’s many accomplishments.

The speakers didn’t address the looming questions, however. These were broached in hushed tones among some WaMu employees: Why exactly did the government seize our bank? Was all this financial pain and personal hardship necessary?

WaMu’s regulators said they based their decision to close the bank and sell it to JPMorgan Chase on lack of liquidity—its access to ready cash—and the mounting pile of failed mortgage loans that were expected to cripple the bank’s earnings for months to come.

But new information—gathered from internal documents and interviews with scores of former WaMu executives, regulators, and other experts—shows that WaMu had plenty of cash on the day it was seized, and a regulator-vetted plan to operate with even less money if necessary.

WaMu also had ample capital—more than the regulatory levels for a “well-capitalized” bank.

Cash and Secrecy

These documents and sources, part of a Puget Sound Business Journal investigation, raise questions about whether the regulators acted precipitously in seizing a bank that could have survived, and in the process wiped out billions of dollars of wealth with widespread personal consequences.

“Someone needs to take a serious look at this because they weren’t illiquid,” said a senior federal official with direct knowledge of WaMu’s circumstances.

Regulators, the official added, “pulled the trigger too soon.”

Yet more than a year later the details of the decision remain shrouded from view. WaMu’s main regulators—the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of Thrift Supervision—continue to decline requests to discuss their actions, release liquidity figures, or give any other evidence that the bank was in a precarious situation that demanded immediate action. In refusing the disclosures, the regulators cite confidentiality regulations for a bank that no longer exists except in a liquidation proceeding and as a basis for numerous lawsuits.