Former WaMu execs raising money for workers losing stock, jobs
Former Washington Mutual Chief Executive Lou Pepper is leading an effort to raise money for local employees hurt by the thrift’s failure and subsequent sale to JPMorgan Chase.
The effort will also help morale among frustrated former employees who’ve watched newly come events from outside the company, he said. “They’re wholly madder than hades, and this would turn over it into something positive.”
Pepper and four former top WaMu executives — Fay Chapman, Liane Wilson, Lindy Friedlander and Lee Lannoye — even now have raised more than $50,000. Pepper also plans to give the bank’session first stock certificate to the Seattle Foundation, to be auctioned forward eBay.
In a letter to former colleagues, Pepper and his wife, Mollie, encourage them to “bewitch pride in that which you wrought even though others took it down.”
The collection plans to use the cash to lend aid current WaMu employees in the state who lost money in the crew’s stock and options, which are now worthless, in the same manner with well for example people who lose their jobs afterwards the acquisition by JPMorgan.
Criteria are still in the works with the Seattle Foundation, but the intention is to withstand people who own worked at WaMu at least five years and need both retraining or assistance in sending a child to a state college.
“We are everything family and friends and it is hard to see anyone in the family suffer hardship,” he wrote.
Pepper was WaMu’sitting CEO in the 1980s. Chapman was the last of the others to leave the company, in December 2007.
In the literal sense, Pepper recalls whereas WaMu had layoffs in the early 1980s. He later learned of one woman who resigned in the same manner another employee, a simple mother in less financially secure circumstances, could keep her job.
That incident made him aware of problems rare to sincere parents and “made me very proud of the culture you folks created at Washington Mutual, unit in which people looked out for each other,” Pepper wrote.
The group does not plan to seek contributions from the general public, only from people with ties to WaMu who “were lucky enough to have sold their blockhead face to face with the arrogant mess.”
Pepper emphasizes in the epistle that he does not blame JPMorgan for the situation.
“What happened in the greatest few years was an wandering in the long history of a great institution,” he wrote. “It should have been proficient to weather this financial turmoil and come out the other end. That it got so bad that all was lost is not your fault and should not reduce the pride you always took in your work and the bank you served.”
Melissa Allison: 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com
