Margin of Safety
Latest Posts
Category: Regulation
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What a week for Anchor Bancorp of Wisconsin. Its holding company declares bankruptcy, then the SEC comes out today with fraud charges against the CFO. (The case was settled.) A bad earnings report just added icing to the cake. Anchor owed the Treasury $139 million in TARP debt. Like Anchor’s other creditors, Treasury settled for…
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My latest story on CFO.com: merchant banking physical commodities warehouses aluminum derivatives price manipulation Goldman Sachs.
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Yep, you guessed it, the federal government. The Financial Times reported today that Freddie Mac will sell a new kind of derivative that will get private investors to take on the risk of default of $22.5 billion in mortgages. From the story: Freddie is selling a new financial product it calls structured agency credit risk,…
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Prior to the financial crisis, you may recall, most of the risk management talk in the banking industry was about protecting against a bird flu virus pandemic. While the mortgage-backed securities market was turning into a toxic wasteland, global regulatory agencies were more concerned about whether banks could function if everyone called in sick. This…
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Listening to two Anglo Irish Bank execs joke about a 7 billion euro bailout is nauseating, but are we really surprised conversations like this went on? This recording of an internal phone conversation between the head of the bank’s capital markets area and its director of retail banking was uncovered by The Irish Independent. The…
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Ok, so this new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is from, um, the Federal Reserve, but the results are still compelling: Our study indicates that the capital depletion during the recent financial crisis at large U.S. financial institutions was extensive and often rapid. Specifically, of the 26 large institutions examined in this…
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U.S. Representatives are not merely waging a fight against auditor rotation. They are trying to marginalize the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
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The Goldman Sachs study on Too Big Too Fail, an S&P note on rising leveraged buyout valuations, and a data screen on the top companies with rising debt levels relative to EBITDA. Enjoy.
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21stCenturyGlassSteagall I haven’t thoroughly reviewed the bill yet, so I am neither for or against it. But this item in the “purpose” section tickles me: (3) to eliminate conflicts of interest that arise from banks engaging in activities from which their profits are earned at the expense of their customers or clients. Profits are always…
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Anat Admati explains her plan for fixing the global banking system. Related articles You give me a capital requirement, I’ll give you a derivative to skirt it. (mathbabe.org) Quick Take: Banks Need More Skin in the Game (thestreet.com) Why the Party Could Be Over for Investment Bankers (live.wsj.com)
Margin of Safety 