BankUnited sees opportunity in property bust

By Jim Loney

MIAMI (Reuters) - The collapsed Miami property market that helped trigger the failure of BankUnited presents a big opportunity for the recapitalized Florida-based lender in the hands of new owners, its chief executive said on Friday.

BankUnited's 85 branches reopened to "business as usual" after the U.S. government closed the bank on Thursday and sold it to investors, and there was no sign of panic among customers, said banking industry veteran John Kanas, who also took over as BankUnited Financial Corp BKUNA.O chairman.

Bank regulators seized the lender and sold it to some of the most powerful private equity firms in the world, including WL Ross & Co, Carlyle Group, Blackstone Group, and Centerbridge Partners. They put up $900 million of capital in the rescue.

Trading in the stock was halted on the NASDAQ exchange on Friday.

Ross, Carlyle and Blackstone each took stakes of between 20 percent and 24.9 percent, a source familiar with the consortium told Reuters on Friday.

The failure is the largest this year, and will cost the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp an estimated $4.9 billion.

The failed BankUnited, the largest Florida-based bank, had $12.8 billion of assets and $8.6 billion of deposits. A congressional aide told Reuters that BankUnited also backdated capital contributions last year that allowed the bank to make its financial books look healthier.

Kanas told Reuters in an interview that the bank's collapse was rooted in a "toxic" mortgage product called a payment option ARM and was closely linked to the Miami property bust, which has seen house and condo values plunge following a boom that doubled prices in the space of a few years.