A website report says that New York-based Dune Capital Management is set to buy IndyMac Bancorp, including all its 33 branches, its $176-billion loan-servicing portfolio and the reverse-mortgage unit. According to the report, a consortium of private equity firms, headed by Los Angeles-based giant Oaktree Capital Management, would be providing Dune’s financing for the deal.

After its collapse, primarily due to the subprime mortgage crisis, in July, IndyMac was declared insolvent and seized by federal regulators. When the bank failed, nearly 130 employees of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) plunged in, to prepare it to reopen under government supervision.

Ever since then, the FDIC and a team of former Lehman Brothers bankers, now with Deutsche Bank, have been engaged in the sale process of the company.

The proposed deal would be atypical in the sense that it the transaction would be among the first of its kind, in which an unregulated private equity firms would acquire a bank holding company. It was in September that the Federal Reserve simplified regulations and allowed private equity firms and hedge funds to acquire portions of bank holding companies.
Though the FDIC said earlier that it might announce a deal for IndyMac by New Year’s Eve, negotiations with Dune are still not finalized, and the deal reportedly is “still fluid.”

For Dune – which was founded in 2004 by ex-Goldman Sachs partners Steven Mnuchin and Daniel Niedich - and its associates, the deal would indeed be a triumph because they would be picking up a solid bank on the cheap.