JPMorgan "suits" stir up WaMu Centre

By Laura Myers

SEATTLE (Reuters) - At 9:40 a.m. (5:40 p.m. British time) on Friday, five buttoned-down bankers rolled their suitcases into the lobby of Washington Mutual's (WM.N) Seattle headquarters.

They said they were from JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), but they didn't need to: nearly everyone else at the WaMu Centre was in jeans.

The night before, JPMorgan agreed to buy WaMu's branches and deposits for less than $2 billion (1.1 billion pounds) as the federal government closed down an institution that survived the Great Depression of the 1930s only to be felled by the mortgage crisis of 2008.

"We don't think we'll have our jobs in a couple of months," said Bryan Johnson, 50, a senior consultant who works at WaMu headquarters. "We went out and got drunk last night, and probably will do so again tonight."

Business was slow at Treasures, Gifts & Goodies, a store in the lobby. Outside, a man used his cell phone to take a picture of the WaMu sign.

"Today nobody knows anything," said Jonathan Shuval, 57, a senior software developer on a cigarette break and waiting for bad news. "In a few days I expect them to come out with platitudes."

WaMu, which was the largest U.S. savings and loan, is a fixture in the city where it was founded in 1889. Many residents lamented that it was only a matter of time before the WaMu signs that dot the town are replaced by JPMorgan Chase signs or simply taken down.

At WaMu headquarters, contract worker Lori Charlebois, 39, said the mood was tense. "All management is in meetings," she said. "Everyone's scurrying about."