Has anyone looked at FRC preferreds? They are non cumulative and payments have been suspended, so they're not paying anything right now.

However, dividends can't be paid to common shareholders unless they reinstate payments to the preferred.

A lot of them are trading in the $5-$6 range.

Going back to 2008, here are some stats from Chat GPT. Ok- so I didn't fact check them but most of these look correct(?) at a high level.

Bank of America suspended its dividend payments in 2009 and did not reinstate them until 2014.
Citigroup suspended its dividend payments in 2009 and did not reinstate them until 2011.
JPMorgan Chase suspended its dividend payments in 2009 and reinstated them in 2010.
Wells Fargo suspended its dividend payments in 2009 and reinstated them in 2011.
Bank of China - Suspended dividend payments in 2009 and reinstated them in 2011.
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (Japan) - Reduced dividend payments in 2009 and resumed regular dividend payments in 2011.
HSBC Holdings (UK) - Reduced dividend payments in 2009 and resumed regular dividend payments in 2010.
BNP Paribas (France) - Suspended dividend payments in 2008 and reinstated them in 2011.
Banco Santander (Spain) - Reduced dividend payments in 2008 and resumed regular dividend payments in 2010.
Barclays (UK) - Reduced dividend payments in 2008 and resumed regular dividend payments in 2014.
China Construction Bank - Reduced dividend payments in 2008 and resumed regular dividend payments in 2010.
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK) - Suspended dividend payments in 2008 and has not yet reinstated them.
Bank of Communications (China) - Reduced dividend payments in 2008 and resumed regular dividend payments in 2010.
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (Japan) - Reduced dividend payments in 2009 and resumed regular dividend payments in 2010.

Most of them only took 3-5 years before they started paying dividends again.
Assuming a scenario where it takes a whole decade before they can reinstate their dividends, assuming the price only recovers to half of par, that would still be a 100% return.

You wouldn't do this with a large part of your portfolio, but this seems like a decent bet. The largest risk is if they go bust. Also I'm not entirely sure what would happen if FRC gets bought out.

Any thoughts?