When David Bonderman, co-founder of TPG, led a group that invested $7bn in Washington Mutual earlier this year, he was taking a page out of a playbook developed during the US savings and loan (S&L) crisis of the 1980s and 1990s.

Mr Bonderman and Jim Coulter, his partner, made one of their first big windfalls during the S&L days while they were working for Bob Bass, the Texan tycoon. The two arranged a $150m deal to buy American Savings Bank in 1988 and received stock worth more than $900m when they sold it in 1996 to WaMu, itself a survivor of the S&L carnage.