Collateralized Debt Obligation: The Lehman Brothers Case Study

In the movie the big short, Lewis Ranieri, who is a banker of the Wall Street, created an idea that companies packed thousands of mortgage all bundled together to sell, which is the AAA credit-rating bond, and can obtain high yields with low risk because everyone should pay for their mortgage. The concept of Lewis Ranieri is called mortgage-backed securities (MBS). However, the demand of buying MBS is more than MBS supply. Therefore, when the risk of MBS is high, Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) is a way to change subprime loans to high- rating bonds and it can be sold again. Although CDO is full of subprime loans, it still can get AAA rating because

A decade ago the Lehman Brothers were the fourth largest investment bank in America. Dealing with Investment banking and investment management, the Lehman Brothers was one of the largest global financial service providers. Consequently, the subprime mortgage crisis left the company filing for the declaration of the chapter 11 bankruptcy protections, due to the unnecessary undertaken risk and obnoxious negligence accusations directed towards the group. Companies should utilize observational and analytical pundit functions in identifying the presence of crisis situations to avoid an economic downturn in the business (Pontell, 2014). The fraud would have prevented through stronger and better internal controls, which

The world’s financial system was almost brought down in 2008 by the collapse of Lehman Brothers that was a major international investment bank at that time. The government sponsored these banks’ bailouts that were funded by tax money in order to restore the industry. Before the crisis, banks were lending irresponsible mortgages to subprime borrowers who had poor credit histories. These mortgages were purchased by banks and packaged into low-risk securities known as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). CDOs were divided into tranches by its default risk. The ratings of those risks were determined by rating agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. However, those agencies were paid by banks and created an environment in which agencies were being generous to ratings since banks were their major clients.

This paper is about how did “Shadow Banking” precipitate the financial Crises. Then discusses the impacts of the crisis on the major financial institutions.

Since the onset of the financial crisis 2008, the sovereign debt crisis in western economies and the new financial regulation with Basel III coming up, the financial industry faces the challenge of reinventing itself. The ring-fence for Commercial and Investment Banking, and new economic and regulatory capital requirements will determine the kinds of products banks will be able to distribute. It will have a huge impact in the Investment Banking business, which will suffer tough regulation and supervisory procedures. At the same time, credit risk models will be reviewed because they have failed to predict the crisis of 2008. The current financial and economic crisis doesn’t have any precedent in the past.

We all know from our course that leverage and liquidity risks of financial institutions are vulnerable to the crisis. The financial crisis that emerged in 2007 had many and varied causes, but one of its most

Collateralized Mortgage Obligation also known as CMO is a structure that is based on risk. The first CMO was in 1983 for Freddie Mac was by Salomon Brothers and First Boston (banks). According to the Investopedia, “A collateralized mortgage obligation is a special purpose entity that receives the mortgage repayments and owns the mortgages it receives cash flows from (called a pool). The mortgages serve as collateral, and are organized into classes based on their risk profile. Income received from the mortgages is passed to investors based on a predetermined set of rules, and investors receive money based on the specific slice of mortgages invested in (called a tranche).” Tranches are created when mortgage loans from an institution such as

Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) refers to a kind of innovative derivative securities product which simply bundling mortgage debt, bonds, loans and other assets together and then rearranging these assets into different tranches with different credit ratings, interest rate payments, risks, and priority of repayment to meet the needs of different investors. As borrowers began to default, investors in the inferior tranche of the CDOs took the first hit, so the owner of this tranche of CDOs may be riskier. In order to compensate for the higher risk, the subordinate tranche receives higher rate of return while the superior tranche receives lower rate but still nice return. To make the top even safer, the banks ensured it small fee called the credit default swap (CDS). The banks do all of the works so that creating rating agencies will stamp the top tranche since as a safe, triple A rated

In this essay I am going to discuss the effects of shadow banking on the recent financial crisis of 2007-8. Shadow banking was one of the major causes of the financial crisis since it was the subprime mortgages which was the first trigger of the collapse in the banking system. Through this essay I am to achieve a detailed analysis of why the shadow banking was one of the causes in the financial crisis and why was it not prevented by any regulation enforced. The basis of shadow banking system is that it occurs when financial intermediaries conduct transformation of maturity, credit and liquidity without having access to the central bank liquidity guarantees or even public sector credit. Maturity transformation: obtaining short-term funds to

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. With $639 billion in assets and $619 billion in debt, Lehman 's bankruptcy filing was the largest in history, as its assets far surpassed those of previous bankrupt giants such as WorldCom and Enron. Lehman was the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank at the time of its collapse, with 25,000 employees worldwide. The consequences for the world economy were extreme. Lehman’s ' fall contributed to a loss of confidence in other banks, a worldwide financial crisis and a deep recession in many countries. Lehman 's collapse roiled global financial markets for weeks, given the size of the company and its status as a major player in the U.S. and internationally. Many questioned the U.S. government 's decision to let Lehman fail, as compared to its tacit support for Bear Stearns, which was acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) in March 2008. Lehman 's bankruptcy led to more than $46 billion of its market value being wiped out. Its collapse also served as the catalyst for the purchase of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America in an emergency deal that was also announced on September 15.

In the new system, an investment banker buys the mortgage from the lender, borrowing millions of dollars to buy thousands of mortgages, and every month he gets payments from homeowners for each of the mortgages. The banker then consolidates all the mortgages and splits the final product into three sections: safe, okay, and risky mortgages, which make up a collateralized debt obligation (CDO). As homeowners pay their mortgages, money flows into each of the sections, with the safe filling first and the risky filling last, contributing to their respective names. Credit agencies stamp the top two safer mortgages with a triple A or triple B rating, which are then be sold to investors who want a safe mortgage, while the risky slice is sold to hedge funds who want a risky investment. The bankers make millions, pay back their loans, and investors also make a worthwhile investment. So pleased are the investors, however, that they want more. Unfortunately, back at the beginning of the cycle, the mortgage broker can no longer find qualified mortgagers

When the financial crisis during 2008 hit the economy, people panicked. In an attempt to stabilize the market, the government took action. The various actions taken in 2008 by the Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as the new regulations proposed and implemented by the Securities and Exchange Commission, were generated to reduce and mitigate the systemic risk created by the Money Market Mutual Funds. These actions and regulations, as well as the systemic risk created, will be addressed during the upcoming paragraphs.

In relation to the increase in house’s price, the rise of financial agreements such as mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO) encouraged investors to invest in the U.S housing market (Krugman, 2009). When housing price declined in the U.S, many financial institutions that borrowed and invested in subprime mortgage reported losses. In addition, the fall of housing price resulted in default and foreclosure and that began to exhaust consumer’s wealth and

This chapter is about the background of 2007-2008 financial crisis. The 2007-2008 financial crisis has a huge impact on US banking system and how the banks operate and how they are regulated after the financial turmoil. This financial crisis started with difficulty of rolling over asset backed commercial papers in the summer of 2007 due to uncertainty on the liquidity of mortgage backed securities and questions about the soundness of banks and non-bank financial institutes when interest rate continued to go up at a faster pace since 2004. In March 2008 the second wave of liquidity loss occurred after US government decided to bailout Bear Stearns and some commercial banks, then other financial institutions took it as a warning of financial difficulty of their peers. In the meantime banks started hoarding cash and reserve instead of lending out to fellow banks and corporations. The third wave of credit crunch which eventually brought down US financial system and spread over the globe was Lehman Brother’s bankruptcy in August 2008. Many major commercial banks in US held structured products and commercial papers of Lehman Brother, as a result, they suffered a great loss as Lehman Brother went into insolvency. This panic of bank insolvency caused loss of liquidity in both commercial paper market and inter-bank market. Still banks were reluctant to turn to US government or Federal Reserve as this kind of action might indicate delicacy of

The CDS does not require buyers to actually hold underlying assets. That means a third party can “insure” against default risk that it would not bear the consequence at the first place. A financial institution can act like an insurance company by selling CDSs. American International Group (AIG) was the largest CDS underwriter during the crisis. AIG issued tons of CDSs because historical default rate on bonds were so low that issuing CDS became a cash generator. They simply collected the premium and never though of paying out anything until the crisis hit.