Countrywide Financial : A Large Diversified Financial Service Provider

The bank at some point received negative attention for issuing credit to arms companies, including companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Textron, Colbun, BAE Systems and EADS. Some companies within the bank’s portfolio have also been involved in environmental and labor rights violations scandals, for instance Wal-Mart and Total USA. This negative attention may lead to loss of investor confidence in the bank.

Fraud At Financial Institutions: What Does The Wells Fargo Cases Portend For Policy In The United States?

On July 21, 2010, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which is commonly referred as the Dodd-Frank Act. This act was passed as a response to the Great Recession in order to prevent potential financial debacle in the future. This regulation has a significant impact on American financial services industry by placing major changes on the financial regulation and agencies since the Great Depression. This paper examines the history and impact of Dodd-Frank Act on American financial services industry.

Lawsuits seem to be coming from all directions, federal and state investigative probes are launched against them, stock price tumbled to 1/5 of its value, even desperate lenders demonstrated outside their offices. 2007 has definitely not been Countrywide 's year.

Bank of America is one of the largest banks in the nation. It is a multinational company and it is recognized by its high revenue value. Unfortunately, Bank of America has endured many complaints and harsh views regarding their lack of ethics. Ethical issues occur when there is a blatant disregard to implement integrity, trust, and responsibility. In some financial institutions, ethical matters are displayed in the way the consumers are treated. Within the past nine years, Bank of America has diminished all of their ethical promises by revealing customer information without their permission; discriminating against consumers based on their race; and manipulating overdraft fees in order to benefit the bank. In order to assess these problems, it is vital to recognize what Bank of America claims to stand for and determine where their most concerning issues are generated from.

Bank of America, under the impression they had made an excellent business decision was unaware of the totality involving Countrywide’s loan practices. Only a small group of Bank of America’s employees were involved in the assessment of Countrywide’s books and operations techniques, yet had no input in the acquisition (Rothacker, 2014). Only a matter of time, Bank of America would realize the magnitude of legal issues it had acquired from Countrywide. However, Bank of America, which was much larger, had the ability to manage the negative media and confront the rising legal troubles better than Countrywide. Ironically, in 2001, Bank of America discontinued subprime mortgages and higher priced loans to riskier consumers (Rothacker,

Since 2011, Wells Fargo employees across the United States have been opening millions of fraudulent accounts in their customer’s names. (Egan, Matt) Combine the credit accounts with the deposit accounts you get about 2.1 million fake accounts of which 100,000 incurred fees totaling 2.4 million dollars. (Levine, Matt) Through multiple customers filing complaints and Wells Fargo “whistleblowers” the fraudulent accounts were brought to light and Wells Fargo was taken to court in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles prosecutor and federal regulators in the middle of 2016. (Reuters) Whistleblowers are those who expose misconduct of organizations and their members. (Exploring Management) As a result of the federal investigations and the lawsuit

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed into federal law by President Obama on July 21, 2010 as a response to the financial crisis of 2007-08. From an economic standpoint the overall consensus leading to the financial crisis can be linked to not only greed, but to ‘excessive deregulation’ and the “finanicialization of everything” (Knight 2015). Supposedly, the failures were due to the financial sector being funded by debt, which already sounds unethical and a poorly planned system. Prior to Dodd-Frank legislation was the Banking Act of 1933, which had similar intentions of providing stability. However, the Act was eaten away over time and companies weren’t as strictly regulated (Acharya 2013).

Lopez, Linette. “Bank of America/Countrywide To Pay $335 Million For Predatory Lending Practices Against African American And Latino Borrowers.” 21 December 2011. Web.

Analysis: The second largest United States financial firm, Wells Fargo was accused of having dishonest business practices. The company was fined for putting pressure on its investment brokers to sell loans to their clients (Zacks, 2016). This type of business is dishonest as well as unethical for any business. Morgan Stanley’s approach was to have internal sales contests and provided cash incentives worth up to $5,000 for selling securities bases loans (Zacks, 2016). This type of loan is an asset based loan which allows the investor to borrow cash against their securities. As many as 30 advisors took into the practice internally and the company reached $24 million in new loan assets (Zacks, 2016).

Bank of America is a bank and financial holding company. It is a financial institution that serves individuals small and large business, large corporations and the government. The bank offers banking, investing, asset management, risk management, and other financial services. Through its subsidiaries and other nonbanking subsidiaries in the United States and international markets it provides six major segments. They are Deposits, Global Card Services, Home Loans and Insurance, Global Banking, and Global Wealth & Investments Management. The company is headquartered in Charlotte North Carolina and employees more than 283M people.

Bank of America purchased Security Pacific Corporation, and with that purchase Bank of America became the first bank to offer coast to coast operations. In the early 21st century bank of America was operating more than 5000 bank branches in the U.S. and conducting investment banking in multiple countries around the world. In 2004, Bank of America expanded its credit card business when they obtained National Processing, which is a transaction processing firm. To receive a high position in the wealth management business, Bank of America gained U.S Trust Corporation, a firm that manages investments in for high net worth clients.

Bank of America was founded in 1904 by Amadeo Peter Giannini when he opened the bank of Italy in San Francisco, it later developed to what we now know as Bank of America. In1958 Bank of America issued its first bank credit card(Bank AmeriCard). Bank America's most substantial purchases was in 1983 the purchase of Washington State Bank. Bank of America became the first bank to offer Coast to Coast operations in the United States and expanded to New England with the acquisition of Fleet Boston Financial Corporation in 2004, by the early twenty-first Century BOA was operating more than 5,500 Bank branches 20 US states in which they conduct corporate and Investment Banking in numerous countries worldwide. Its merger with MBNA Corporation in 2006

Bank of America is a banking and financial service industry located in Charlotte, North Carolina. If you would like to access the internet address for Bank of America, then you can click on this link provided https://www.bankofamerica.com . Its primary SIC Code is 6021 – National Commercial Banks, and its primary NAICS Code is 522110 – Commercial Banking. The Bank of American provides many goods and services for its customers such as banking, credit cards, loans, and investments. Every day Bank of America is competing against many competitors but JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo are some of the largest. Bank of America’s stock exchange ticker symbol is NYSE: BAC. The external auditor is PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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.