[3] Such savings and loan associations had been deregulated in the early 1980s, allowing them to make highly risky investments with their depositors' money, a change of which Keating took advantage.

[3] Alan Greenspan sent a letter in February 1985 to officials of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco supporting an application for an exemption for Lincoln to a bank board rule forbidding substantial amounts of some investments, yet the exemption was not granted to Lincoln.

[8][9][10] This total came to about $285 million, largely because such investors held securities backed by the parent company rather than deposits in the federally insured institution, a distinction apparently lost on many if not most of them until it was too late.

At the time of the Federal seizure on April 14, 1989, Lincoln Savings was the 42nd largest savings & loan in the country with 29 branches throughout Southern California and assets of $5.4 billion and deposits of $4.4 billion but only $20 million in required capital on hand instead of the required $325 million in capital.

In March 1991, Beverly Hills-based Great Western Bank paid the RTC $12.1 million for 28 offices and $1 billion in deposits.