John M. Mason submits:

There were two pieces of banking news last week that seemed to fall below the radar screen due to the visit of China’s President Hu Jintao and the events in Tunisia and Egypt. These two pieces of news had to do with BankUnited (BKU), a Florida bank that was “saved” by a group of buyout firms, and with ICBC, the world’s biggest bank by value which happens to be a Chinese bank, who announced that it was buying an American bank.

BankUnited sold 29 million shares of stock at an initial public offering on Thursday evening for $27 per share. This put the value of the bank around $2.6 billion.

To me, the important thing about BankUnited is the owners of the bank which include Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., the Blackstone Group, the Carlyle Group and Centerbridge Partners. BankUnited was Florida’s biggest bank when it failed in May 2009. The unique ownership of the bank came about when the FDIC sold the bank to this group of “private” investo

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