Hartford Financial Spends $10 Million to Get $1.1 Billion

From Bloomberg:

Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. jumped 21 percent to $12.65. The insurer that lost 79 percent of its market value in the past two months said it's buying a Florida bank for $10 million to become eligible for federal rescue funds. Hartford expects to qualify for $1.1 billion to $3.4 billion under Treasury Department guidelines.

As Portfolio notes:

In a sign of how far we have come from the last banking fiasco, the S&L fiasco of the early 1990’s, as how as how deep the current financial crisis is, one of the nation’s biggest insurance companies wants to become a savings and loan.