FDIC may seize 'critically undercapitalized' Chicago-based lender
By Becky Yerak | Tribune reporter
August 2, 2009
Wilbur Ross of WL Ross & Co., one of the BankUnited investors, said in a letter to the FDIC: "The substance of the financial proposals is to impose such discriminatory burdens that private capital will no longer bid in the FDIC auctions of failed banks."
Chicago business attorney believes that the FDIC eventually will create a structure welcoming to private capital in the bidding for failed banks, and that's a good thing. He doesn't want "a bunch of cowboy private-equity firms to pull off a bad deal and get into trouble." If that happens, he said it would close off bank deals for "good private-equity investors and managers in the future."
Kanas in 2006 sold his North Fork Bancorporation and then re-emerged in May to lead a private-equity consortium that invested $900 million into the collapsed $12.8 billion-asset BankUnited in Coral Gables, Fla., in an FDIC-assisted deal.
