Washington Mutual Card Services history

It took the fledgling company only until February 10, 1890, before it issued its first three loans.

He soon realized that he could make more as a sales agent than he could as general manager (his salary was $3,500 a year). So he quit in 1892 and became the sales agent for Oregon.

Raymond Frazier, who would later become the bank's president, first encountered it in 1903 in Denmark, where it had worked well for that country's thrifty farmers.

About 20,000 people showed up to gawk on opening day, June 20, 1921.

In 1923, it started the School Savings Program, in which schoolchildren all over Seattle saved their pennies and nickels, brought them to school and then deposited them in Washington Mutual at a 5 percent interest rate.

Such encouraging growth came to a stop by the end of the decade, however, as the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929 gave way to a decade-long economic depression that wrought devastation for the United States banking industry.

It was during the first months of this unrivaled economic plunge that Washington Mutual completed the first acquisition in its history, acquiring Continental Mutual Savings Bank in July 1930.

The first came in February 1931 when an unrelated bank, Puget Sound Savings and Loan announced it would not open one Monday morning.

When Washington Mutual finally reopened on March 14, 1933, new restrictions had been imposed nationwide.

Washington Mutual Savings Bank, 2nd Avenue and Spring Street, Seattle, 1940

In 1941, it acquired Coolidge Mutual Savings Bank in Seattle, which had ties to Washington Mutual personnel.

David Auer buying savings bond from teller Ruth Gray, Washington Mutual Savings Bank, Seattle, 1954

It took Washington Mutual until 1964 to expand outside Seattle, when it acquired Spokane's Citizen Mutual Savings Bank, which had branches in Spokane and Pullman.

Then in 1965, Washington Mutual acquired Liberty Mutual Savings Bank, with branches in Yakima, Kennewick, and Grandview.

The same scenario was played out in 1973 when the Grays Harbor Savings and Loan Association converted into Grays Harbor Mutual Savings Bank just before its acquisition by Washington Mutual, adding a branch office in Grays Harbor to the Seattle-based bank's growing empire.

It was introduced in Bellevue Square in 1974, in a concrete installation designed to "withstand a burglar with a bulldozer" (Morgan). Washington Mutual soon joined with 16 other banks to make The Exchange into a cash machine network, one of the first such systems in the nation.

The bank introduced a new service in 1976 -- an innovative pay-bills-by-phone service.

A recession and a tight money supply forced Washington Mutual to take the extreme step in October 1979 of granting no more home loans.

1982 Arrival of Killinger

It converts to investor ownership, with shares starting to trade on March 11, 1983.

Once brought into the Washington Mutual fold, Killinger rose quickly through the bank's executive ranks, becoming president in 1988 and chief executive officer two years later.

In 1989 -- its 100th anniversary -- the company built a dramatic new addition to the Seattle skyline: The Washington Mutual Tower, just a block from its longtime headquarters.

New chairman Kerry K. Killinger, who had started as a young Murphey Favre executive, told the Puget Sound Business Journal in 1990 that the company's goal was to be the premier consumer bank in the Northwest.

In 1991, Washington Mutual ranked as Washington's largest independently owned financial institution, with $8 billion in assets and 84 financial centers and 17 home loan centers in its home state, Oregon, and Idaho.

These impressive figures would soon be dwarfed by the magnitude of the bank four years later, as Washington Mutual's acquisition spree ignited its growth, carried the bank into Montana and Utah, and necessitated the formation of Washington Mutual, Inc. as a holding company in August 1994.

Meanwhile, the number of branch offices operated by the bank had increased dramatically, reaching a total of 248 financial centers and 23 loan centers by the end of 1995.

In 1996, the bank nearly doubled its size by acquiring Irvine, California-based American Savings Bank.

1997-98: Washington Mutual buys Great Western Financial and H.F. Ahmanson for a combined $13.6 billion, becoming a West Coast power with their strong California presence.

2001: Acquisition of Dime Bancorp gives Washington Mutual a big New York presence.

And at that time, Killinger was a very different person than the one who existed in 2002.

December 2007: WaMu shares hit an 11-year low after it cuts its dividend by 73 percent.

On September 25, 2008, the federal Office of Thrift Management seized the bank.

March 12, 2010: The Washington Mutual Inc. holding company, in bankruptcy since WaMu failed, reaches tentative agreement with JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) over some $4 billion in disputed assets.