January 27, 2009

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp has hired investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners LP to advise the agency on ways to stabilize the U.S. banking system, an agency spokesman said on Monday.The firm, founded by Joseph Perella, may also advise the agency on the sale of failed institutions and the handling of delinquent loans and distressed securities assumed by banks, FDIC spokesman Andrew Gray said.

The move, earlier reported by Bloomberg News, comes at a time when U.S. banking regulators at the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and the FDIC are considering whether to create an "aggregator bank" to soak up bad assets from banks' balance sheets.The FDIC administers an industry-funded reserve used to pay depositors when their bank fails.