• Seattle Post-Intelligencer , Friday, September 26, 2008 10:45 AM

Columnist Bill Virgin says that his hometown bank, Washington Mutual, pursued a dream of becoming a coast-to-coast consumer financial-services giant under former CEO Kerry Killinger.

"The company's message took on a tone of irreverence, of being unbankerly," Virgin writes. "The branches looked more like a friendly neighborhood Starbucks store than a traditional and intimidating marble-and-brass financial palace, the checking accounts came without up-front fees and the advertising tweaked pinstripe-suited bankers," Virgin writes.

But with so much of its image in recent times tied to its words, "it ran out of the right words to convince regulators it should be given enough time to prove it could back up its story," Virgin says.

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