Wamu Conference Call on Sep. 08. 2008 / 9:00AM
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FINAL TRANSCRIPT WM - WaMu Conference Call Event Date/Time: Sep. 08. 2008 / 9:00AM ET www.streetevents.com Contact Us © 2008 Thomson Financial. Republished with permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of Thomson Financial. FINAL TRANSCRIPT Sep. 08. 2008 / 9:00AM, WM - WaMu Conference Call CORPORATE PARTICIPANTS Alan Magleby Washington Mutual, Inc. - SVP IR Steve Frank Washington Mutual, Inc. - Chairman Alan Fishman Washington Mutual, Inc. - CEO CONFERENCE CALL PARTICIPANTS Howard Shapiro Fox-Pitt Cochran Caronia - Analyst Paul Miller Friedman, Billings, Ramsey - Analyst Chris Brendler Stifel Nicolaus - Analyst PRESENTATION Operator Good day ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the WaMu conference call. My name is Catena and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session towards the end of this conference. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I will now turn the presentation over to your host for today©s call, Mr. Alan Magleby, Director of Investor Relations. Please proceed. Alan Magleby - Washington Mutual, Inc. - SVP IR Good morning and thank you for joining us today. I want to remind you that our comments today may contain forward-looking statements concerning our financial condition, results, and expectations, and that there are a number of factors that may cause actual results in the future to be different from our current expectations. These factors include among other things changes in general business, economic, and market conditions; competitive pressures in the financial services industry; economic trends that negatively impact the real estate lending environment; or legislative and regulatory changes that may impact our business. For additional factors please see our current press release and other recent documents filed with the SEC. Please note that this is not intended to be an intra-quarter business update. We will not be providing information and will not take questions on quarter-to-date results. We will conclude the call before the market opens in half an hour. With that I will turn the call over to Steve Frank, Chairman of the board of WaMu. Steve? Steve Frank - Washington Mutual, Inc. - Chairman Thanks, Alan. Good morning and thank you for joining us on such short notice. With me today is Alan Fishman, WaMu©s new CEO. As we announced this morning, Kerry Killinger has left the Company after 18 years as CEO, and we are very pleased that Alan has accepted the Board©s offer to succeed him. www.streetevents.com Contact Us 1 © 2008 Thomson Financial. Republished with permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of Thomson Financial. FINAL TRANSCRIPT Sep. 08. 2008 / 9:00AM, WM - WaMu Conference Call Let me begin by thanking Kerry for his dedication and 25 years of service to WaMu. Kerry is a visionary who built WaMu into a powerful brand and a nationwide banking franchise. The Board appreciates Kerry©s many contributions to WaMu, and we wish him the best in his future endeavors. Like others in the industry WaMu is currently facing unprecedented housing and market conditions. At this juncture in the Company©s history, the Board felt that new leadership with a combination of deep industry experience and a fresh perspective would be most effective way to lead the Company through this difficult period and return it to profitability. We conducted a thorough search and considered both internal and external candidates. After careful consideration we decided that Alan would be the best candidate to lead WaMu. Alan has spent his entire career in the financial services industry as both an executive and an investor. Alan was president and CEO of Independence Community Bank from 2001 to 2006, when it was acquired by Sovereign Bancorp. Alan became president and COO of Sovereign, and then left after ensuring a smooth transition. Since then he has been involved in a number of business and civic activities including serving as chairman of Meridian Capital Group, one of the country©s largest commercial mortgage brokers. Before coming to Independence, he was brought in as CEO of Conti Financial Corporation when the company was going through a very difficult period. Earlier in his career he spent 20 years in senior executive positions at Chemical Bank where, among other positions, he ran the retail branch system and served as CFO. He later moved to AIG where he was in charge of financial services investments in the early ©90s. The Board has great confidence in Alan©s ability to lead WaMu through this next stage in its evolution and return the Company to profitability as quickly as possible. We know that WaMu©s nationwide retail banking franchise remains strong. With that short introduction I will turn the call over to Alan. Alan Fishman - Washington Mutual, Inc. - CEO Thank you, Steve, for that kind introduction. First let me echo Steve©s comments about Kerry. Kerry has been responsible for building a very talented team here at WaMu and clearly an incredibly strong franchise. I look forward to working with and getting to know the WaMu team. I want to thank and commend all of the team members at WaMu for their dedication and incredibly hard work through a difficult period. Together, it is my hope that we will make WaMu©s franchise even stronger. Like everyone else in the business, WaMu is facing very significant pressures; and I know I need to hit the ground running, and I am prepared to do that. This has been an unprecedented period in the financial services industry, with the credit markets, the mortgage markets experiencing a dramatic boom and bust. We are now working our way through the bust and the associated problems, and it will take some time before the housing markets and its related financing markets stabilize. WaMu has already taken significant positive steps to manage this, but I am sure that we will have still a great deal of work ahead of us. My first priority in the next several days will be to ensure that our people have the tools and support they need to serve our customers well in this environment and that we maintain a high level of service to all of our customers. While we are making sure that we are delivering on our service and performance promise, at the same time it is essential that we will start working on building a winning model for the future. The retail banking and the mortgage business will continue to evolve very rapidly over the next few years, and this provides, I think, a great opportunity for those institutions that identify the kinds of things that will allow us to compete effectively within that new framework. In fact I believe the opportunity to create a great national retail franchise has never been better. WaMu has a tremendous national brand and retail franchise. We will build on those strengths to create a business that can compete and can win and, at the same time, deliver real value for our shareholders, for our customers, and employees. www.streetevents.com Contact Us 2 © 2008 Thomson Financial. Republished with permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of Thomson Financial. FINAL TRANSCRIPT Sep. 08. 2008 / 9:00AM, WM - WaMu Conference Call I want to reaffirm our world-class commitment at the same time to serve the communities in which we operate. So in the early days, those are my objectives and that is why I©m excited and honored to take this position. Clearly I share the Board©s confidence in WaMu©s underlying strength. While we have a lot of hard work ahead of us, I know that we can and will manage the issues that we face today. One last comment before we take questions and I turn the call back to Steve. I am sure many of you are interested in my perspective on the various issues WaMu is currently facing. Obviously having been the CEO for only a matter of hours, I am not in a position to respond to those questions yet. But I want to assure you that my style is to be open and transparent. Those of you that know me I think will acknowledge that. So with that, let me turn the call back to Steve. Steve Frank - Washington Mutual, Inc. - Chairman Thanks, Alan. We©re very happy to have you on board and have great confidence in your leadership. Before we open the lines for Q&A I want to discuss one other point. This morning we also announced that we have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Office of Thrift Supervision concerning aspects of the bank©s operations, principally in several areas of its risk management and compliance functions, including its Bank Secrecy Act compliance program. In addition, the bank has committed to provide the OTS an updated multiyear business plan and forecast for earnings, asset quality, capital, and business segment performance. This business plan will not require the Company to raise capital, increase liquidity, or make any changes to the products and services that we provide to customers. We intend to work closely with the OTS to strengthen our oversight in those areas. With that, Alan and I will be happy to take a few questions before the market opens. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Operator (Operator Instructions) Howard Shapiro, FPK.