"This institution failed today due to a liquidity crisis," OTS Director John Reich said. "Although this institution was already in distress, I am troubled by any interference in the regulatory process."
IndyMac was founded in 1985 by David Loeb and Angelo Mozilo, who also founded Countrywide, another big mortgage lender whose loans helped fuel the housing boom. Countrywide was taken over last week by Bank of America Corp.
FDIC spokesman David Barr said agency officials arrived at IndyMac's headquarters in Pasadena at 3 p.m. (2200 GMT).
The successor FDIC-run bank opens for business on Monday. Over the weekend, depositors will have access to their funds by ATM, other debit card transactions, or by writing checks, but no access via online banking and phone services until Monday.
Yet many customers were in the dark as branches shut on Friday. "I'm pissed. They should have let me know," said Elizabeth Ortega, a 29-year-old hairdresser who has a checking account with IndyMac.
IndyMac had said earlier in the week it was unable to raise new capital, would slash staff by 60 percent and had stopped making home loans. Its stock then tumbled, last trading at 28 cents on the New York Stock Exchange, down 95 percent in 2008.
The FDIC insures up to $100,000 per deposit and up to $250,000 per retirement account at insured banks.
At the time of closing, IndyMac had about $1 billion of potentially uninsured deposits held by about 10,000 depositors. The FDIC said it would pay those depositors an advance dividend equal to 50 percent of the uninsured amount.
The OTS told a conference call with reporters that it did not expect significant market impact from IndyMac's closure as the firm is not a systemic institution and does not have numerous counterparties. Reich also said he did not expect a larger thrift to fail.
MORE FAILURES SEEN
Four small banks have already been closed this year and the FDIC is hiring more staff in preparation for more failures. The agency has boosted its list of troubled banks to 90 and has said an increasing number of banks face high exposure to deteriorating conditions in commercial real estate and construction lending. Last year, just three banks failed.
"IndyMac's takeover by the FDIC is one of many to come," predicted Daniel Alpert, an investment banker at Westwood Capital in New York.
Former FDIC official Ann Graham said it was not unprecedented for the FDIC to start running a bank after it fails. "It happens when they need to move more swiftly with the closing than they can move with a potential sale," said Graham, a law professor at Texas Tech University.
"They don't have to sell the institution over the weekend," she said. "They have the time to shop around."
Graham said the FDIC has the authority to operate an institution for two years but expected the agency would dispose of it much sooner than that.
