Last night Washington Mutual’s assets were seized by federal regulators. Washington Mutual joins Lehman Brothers and Indymac Bancorp, also victims of the sub-prime mortgage debacle and credit crunch, on the bankruptcy chopping block. With total assets being reported at $307 billion USD, Washington Mutual becomes the second largest bankruptcy in history behind Lehman Brothers and the largest public bank failure ever. Combined Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual had almost 1 trillion dollars in assets at the time of filing. Below I’ve compiled a list of the Top 10 Largest Public Bankruptcy filings:

 

Top 10 Largest Public Company Bankruptcies
Company		Bankruptcy Date		Pre-Bankruptcy Assets
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.		9/15/2008		$691.0 billion
Washington Mutual		9/25/2008		$307 billion
Worldcom, Inc.		7/21/2002		$103.9 billion
Enron Corp		12/2/2001		$65.5 billion
Conseco		12/18/2001		$61.4 billion
Pacific Gas and Electric Company		4/6/2001		$36.2 billion
Texaco		4/12/1987		$34.9 billion
Financial Corp. of America		9/9/1988		$33.9 billion
Refco		10/17/2005		$33.3 billion
IndyMac Bancorp Inc.		7/31/2008		$32.7 billion
* Listed in descending order by Pre-Petition Assets
Source: BankruptcyData.com New Generation Research, Inc. Boston, MA