IndyMac becomes latest banking victim of US housing slump

[LRE]

Another US mortgage lender has collapsed under the weight of the credit crunch.

This time it is IndyMac Bank, and it becomes the second biggest American financial institution ever to go bankrupt.

To protect customers it is now under the control of the federal regulator, the FDIC.

A spokesman said: “The FDIC over the next 90 days or so will begin to try and market this bank to get it back into private hands but until then, for customers, if you had less than 100,000 dollars, for you it should be business as usual.”

IndyMac customers have withdrawn the equivalent of around 800 million euros in the last 11 days.

Its liquidity crisis was the fatal blow for the California-based bank, which was already on its knees amid the US housing slump.

http://www.euronews.net/en/article/12/07...ing-slump/