Texas Lawyer: The Bank Job
Lisa Pennington, Managing Partner of the firm's Houston office, was quoted in a February 23, 2009, Texas Lawyer article, "The Bank Job: Remember the S&L Crisis? Today's Tanking Banks Mean the FDIC Is Hiring—Again."
According to the article, with 25 banks nationwide failing in 2008 and 13 so far in 2009, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) work is back in full force, which means there is a big financial opportunity for law firms in Texas with banking regulatory experience, as the FDIC expects to hire outside counsel to investigate those institutions. Lawyers at a number of firms in Texas who did work for the FDIC and the now-defunct Resolution Trust Corp. (RTC) during the last banking crisis say they plan to return to such steady work.
Pennington laughs when she thinks about once again gearing up to work for banking regulators, according to the article. "I was relatively young at the time," the 1983 University of Texas School of Law graduate said about her work for the RTC in the early 1990s. Back then, she says, the FDIC and RTC were "the only game in town" for banking lawyers.
This time around, Pennington noted, the bank failures are concentrated in California and Florida—not in Texas as happened during the savings and loan crisis—but she says her firm also will apply to be on the FDIC's approved vendor list. Pennington suggested that the FDIC should have an easier time recouping losses for taxpayers since more directors and officers of the failed financial institutions have liability insurance compared to the previous crisis.