Case Study Lehman Brothers Scandal

In this case, there are several conspirators who is involved in the fraud receiving punishment from either SEC or federal government. Robert Levin, the AMRE executive and major stockholder, and Dennie D.Brown, the company’s chief accounting officer, were subject to the punishment in the form of a huge amount of fine by the SEC and the federal government. This punishment came from reasons. After AMRE going public, the company have the obligation to publish its financial reports but its performance did not meet expectation. The investigation by SEC shows that Robert took the first step of this scam, fearing the sharp drop of AMRE’s stock price because of the poor performance of company. He abetted Brown, to practice three main schemes to present a false appearance of profitable and pleasant financial reports. Firstly, they instructed Walter W.Richardson, the company’s vice president of data processing, to enter fictitious unset leads in the lead bank and they originally deferred the advertising cost mutiplying “cost per lead” and “unset leads” amount, so that they deferred a portion of its advertising costs in an asset account. The capitalizing of advertising expenses allowed them to inflate the net income for the first quarter of fiscal 1988. Secondly, at the end of the third and fourth quarters of fiscal 1988, they added fictitious inventory to AMRE’s ending inventory records, and prepared bogus inventory count sheets for the auditors. Thirdly, they overstated the percentage

Accordingly, the firm had more mortgage-backed safes than any other company in the U.S; in fact, the mortgage-backed securities were four times as many as its value of shared equity to its shareholders. In the early parts 2007, the company had a total of $86 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities; the credit crisis of the U.S saw the stock value fall drastically (Pontell, 2014). The business was affected by the miscalculation; in the year to follow the company would eliminate mortgage-related employee positions and close its offices in the BNC unit and the Alt-A lender Aurora in some states.

The recent mortgage crisis in the US was unprecedented. It led to a massive clampdown of financial institutions, occasioning one of the worst financial melt-downs the US has ever faced (Jaffe, 2008). Quite naturally, it would be necessary to examine the cause of the crisis in order to draft prophylactic measures that would prevent the same financial disaster in the future. This paper will discuss the events that led to the mortgage crisis.

During 2007 through 2010 there existed what we commonly refer to as the subprime mortgage crisis. Through deduction of readings by those considered esteemed in the realm of finance - such as Ben Bernanke - the crisis arose out of an earlier expansion of mortgage credit. This included extending mortgages to borrowers who previously would have had difficulty getting mortgages; this both contributed to and was facilitated by rapidly rising home prices. Pre-subprime mortgages, those looking to buy homes found it difficult to obtain mortgages if they had below average credit histories, provided small down payments or sought high-payment loans without the collateral, income, and/or credit history to match with their mortgage request. Indeed some high-risk families could obtain small-sized mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), otherwise, those facing limited credit options, rented. Because of these processes, home ownership fluctuated around 65 percent, mortgage foreclosure rates were low, and home construction and house prices mainly reflected swings in mortgage interest rates and income.

The crisis that stressed lots of economies and financial systems originated in US mortgage lending markets. First signals of possible problems came in early 2007, when the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation announced about its inability of purchasing high-risk mortgages, after what New Century Financial Corporation - a leading mortgage lender to riskier customers - filed for bankruptcy (John Marshall, 2009). In the research paper of 2009 he claims that source of the crisis emanated from the rise of house pricing, called housing bubble. “US house prices rose dramatically from 1998 until late 2005, more than doubling over this period, and far faster than average wages. Further support for the existence of a bubble came from the ratio of house prices to renting costs which rocketed upwards around 1999..” (John Marshall, 2009, p 10). Housing bubble was also fully analyzed by Dean Baker in his research “The housing Bubble and the financial crisis” in 2008. Dean noticed that, by the middle of 2007, house prices had peaked and began to head downward.

They discovered that since there had been a modified opinion of the 2006 financial statements, where the auditors raised questions of going concern. The company had suffered persistent losses and the lack of cash flow was impairing their ability to secure financing. They also learned that subsequent auditors had been dismissed also for apparently coming to the same conclusion as the predecessor firm. Upon further investigation the team found that a million dollar loan covenant had been violated by neglect to keep a minimum balance due to the fact that the owner had withdrawn $500,000.00 out of the company account to place a down payment on his home. The next time the covenant was broken the bank started foreclosure on the loan.

Sub-prime mortgages were a lucrative new market idea, pushed by the government, executed by the lending institutions, in order to provide everyone the American Dream. During the expanding economy, this dream became a reality—untested and unchecked—as low interest rates fueled the desire of investors to make dreams come true! Ultimately, the vicissitudes of the economy turned downward and the snowball effect began while financial sectors and investors scrambled to catch the falling knife. While history is being written this very day and hindsight is 20/20, we can reflect on the ideologies and policies that brought forth the worst economic downturn since the Great

The 2008 mortgage crisis was preceded by a series of missteps and unfortunate circumstances culminating in a perfect storm that triggered the worst financial meltdown since the great depression. After experiencing an 87% increase in average home prices between January 2002 and mid –2006, the mortgage market steadily declined and the boom began to subside. Unfortunately, the boom soon became a bust and by the end of 2008, housing prices were about 25% below the peak level achieved in 2006. As a result liquidity and capital disappeared from the market. (Jeune Renay. Lessons Learned In The Aftermath Of The Mortgage Crisis). A period of unusually high home foreclosure rates that caused an impact on the economy is still some years later an unfolding story in many American cities. It was not just a subprime event, but a much broader phenomenon that was among the most notable economic events of recent years. This was the result of irresponsible buyers who borrowed much more than they could afford. Regardless of the cause, foreclosure was difficult for the individuals who experienced it. They simply were buyers who had not done their homework. Today is safe to say that home buying isn’t for everyone. Despite all that has been said and done about this crisis, one realizes a need to understand and discuss the lessons learned as well as determine silver linings drawn from the event which will more fully illustrate how buyers are benefiting today. The following paragraphs will explain

The executives are accountable to the board of directors. Instead of protecting the investors, the board enticed the culture of financial fraud in the company for selfish gains. It failed in its duties in keeping the executives in check.

Colombo’s case together with that of five other employees was put on hold after the owner of BNC, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy in late 2008. The company dismissed the allegations made in the suit arguing that they would contest them on the merits in the pending litigation. Meanwhile, the sub prime loan began to go bad, making the lives of thousands of wholesalers in the company very difficult, thus forcing them to quit from the company. Wall Street reined in the company’s mortgage factories, pulling credit lines, tightening its lending principles, and compelling lenders to buy the same risky loan it once consumed. In essence, the company was in the verge of collapse.

Housing prices in the United States rose steadily after the World War II. Although some research indicated that the financial crisis started in the US housing market, the main cause of the financial crisis between 2007 and 2009 was actually the combination of housing bubble and credit boom. The banks created so much loan that pushed the housing price to the peak. As the bank lend out a huge amount of money, the level of individual debt also rose along with the housing price. Since the debt rose faster than people’s income, people were unable to repay their loan and bank found themselves were in danger. As this showed a signal for people, people withdrew money from the banks they considered as “safe” before, and increased the “haircuts” on repos and difficulties experienced by commercial paper issuers. This caused the short term funding market in the shadow banking system appeared a

In light of the recent scandals that rose around big multinationals such as Enron and WorldCom, it has become evident that reform in the traditional corporate operations and objectives was to be encompassed in the organisations corporate strategies. Indeed throughout the years, companies main objectives were defined primarily as being economic objectives, Multinationals developed with sight of profit maximisations regardless to the other incentives, Friedman considered that to be the foundation for a well-managed company, it was further considered that the financing of any other sort of social corporate activities rather unnecessary. The expenses were regarded as expenditures for the owners and investors; this was a time where shareholders rights were regarded as conflicting with other constituents namely the employees, creditors, customers or the community in general. However this interpretation is seen as rather inadequate due to the nature of the amalgamated relation between both constituents. Stakeholders in modern corporate doctrine are considered as a core apparatus for the well functioning of a business. It is however often argued that the only way for a corporation to achieve better results and maximise its profits is to include other people in the process, individuals or organisations with direct or indirect interest in the well performance of the company, that is the reason why modern regulations and codes include a number of stakeholders other than the

In 1994, Richard S. Fuld took control of Lehman Brothers as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Under Fuld’s aggressive leadership, the company flourished and became one of the largest investment banks in the United States. （Crossley-Holland 2009) reported that in 1994, each Lehman Brothers stock was averaging at $4 and by 2007 it catapulted to $82 creating a 20 fold increase. From 1994, Lehman Brothers gradually adopted an aggressive growth business strategy by expanding into highly complex and risky products such as Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS). By 2007, Lehman Brothers was the biggest underwriter of mortgage-backed securities of the U.S. real estate market.

This work will examine the case 'Banking Industry Meltdown: The Ethical Financial Risk Derivatives" and determine which moral philosophy is most applicable to an understanding of the banking industry meltdown and explain the rationale. The case study will be analyzed and white-collar crimes considered as to whether they are different in any substantive manner from other more blue-collar crimes. This study will determine and discuss the role that corporate culture played in banking industry scenario and the response will be supported with specific examples. This work will postulate how leaders within the banking industry could have used their influence to avert the industry meltdown.

This paper will discuss the corporation WorldCom, a telecommunications company that was based in Mississippi. In 2002 WorldCom was involved in one of the largest accounting scandals in the United States. WorldCom inflated its assets by nearly $11 billion dollars, which eventually lead to about 30,000 employees losing their jobs, as well as, 180-billion dollars in losses for its investors. The CEO at the time of this accounting fraud was Bernard Ebbers and led to him receiving a 25-year prison sentence. This paper will go into the details of how WorldCom was able to manipulate its accounting records to deceive its internal auditors, as well as, investors.