(Reuters) - Mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley warned on the prospects for the market on Monday and said it had slashed the price of its emergency cash call to attract a lifeline from a U.S. private equity firm, TPG Capital.

Following are five key facts about Bradford & Bingley (B&B):

* A former building society formed in 1964 from the merger of the Bradford Equitable Building Society and the Bingley Building Society, B&B demutualised in July 2000 and listed on the stock exchange in December that year. Some 40 percent of the bank's shares are still held by retail investors.

* In recent years, B&B has transformed itself into a specialist mortgage bank and is now Britain's largest buy-to-let lender, providing loans to landlords and property investors. It also provides "self-cert" mortgages, or loans for the self-employed and those with more than one job.

* At its peak in March 2006, B&B was worth 3.3 billion pounds. The shares have since tumbled, losing 76 percent of their value since the start of this year alone. At current prices, the lender is worth around 400 million pounds.

* The bank has been under pressure since May, when it announced plans for a bumper 300 million pound emergency rights issue, a month after denying it had any plans to do so. B&B said at the time that it had waited for markets to stabilise before going ahead with the deeply discounted issue.

* Chairman Rod Kent, who resigned as chairman of Close Brothers on Monday, has taken on an executive role at the bank after its chief executive, Steven Crawshaw, stepped down on Sunday due to ill-health. Crawshaw joined the bank from Lloyds TSB just under a decade ago to lead its flotation and was behind the bank's shift to a focus on specialist loans. Crawshaw has also resigned as chair of the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

Source: Reuters; www.bbg.co.uk;

(Writing by Jijo Jacob, editing by David Cutler)