 Board members typically rewarded themselves with well-paid positions, luxury foreign trips and soft loans.After the bust, out of the 45 cajas in existence at the start of the crisis in 2007, only two survived in their initial form; the rest were either taken over by other banks or by the government or forced to merge and taken over by the government, wiping out existing equity holders.However, the former cajas continue to exist, in the form of "banking foundations" or "ordinary foundations", that have seen their actions restricted to social and cultural incentives and sponsoring, and most of their financial means converted into shareholdings into the subsequent "cajabancas" (or banks that have emerged from the former cajas).