Off-balance Sheet Financing Vehicles – Restructuring Problems
When something collapses, there are always some things to blame on; and for the financial crisis erupted August 2007, people blamed it on off-balance sheet financing vehicles. Special purpose entities (SPEs), structured investment vehicles (SIVs), or variable interest entities (VIE) are different terms used for “off-balance sheet financing” practices that banks had used to hide their debts until the recent market meltdown. This paper will briefly discuss the genuine problem causing the collapse in financial system, what actions have been taken by the policy makers, and whether or not those actions will work. 1. The rise and fall of SIVs Even though question for the
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This proposal when being implemented would limit companies from the so-called balance sheet “window-dressing”. In other words, instead of only seeing year-end amount of short-term borrowings under the current SEC rules, investors would be able to see the ongoing liquidity and leverage risk of a company by comparing the average and maximum amounts outstanding throughout the reporting period (SEC, 2010). * The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB): The board has issued new rules on reporting off-balance-sheet entities in Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No.166 (FAS 166) – Accounting for Transfers of Financial Assets and Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No.167 (FAS 167) – Amendments to FASB Interpretation No. 46(R). The FAS 166 eliminated the concept of a qualifying special-purpose entity, set new restrictions in financial asset derecognition, and required companies to disclose all information of its involvements and risk exposure with transferred financial assets (FASB, 2009). FAS 167 requires an ongoing reconsideration of whether the enterprise’s variable interests give it a controlling financial interest in a variable interest entity in contrast to former guidance which only requires consolidating decision when specific events. It also replaces the former quantitative-based model by a qualitative approach to determine the extent
The globalization of business activity has resulted in the need for a uniform set of accounting rules in all countries. With U.S. corporations doing so much business in other countries, it is imperative that the SEC and international regulatory boards devise a set of rules and regulations that would benefit both parties. If this did not happen, international companies would be able to do whatever they wanted without repercussion because of the discrepancies in the differing sets of rules. Accomplishing this universal set of rules would allow companies to list securities in any market without having to prepare more than one set of financial statements. There have been so many
On October 3, 2008 President George W. Bush signed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, otherwise known as the “bailout.” The Purpose of this act was defined as to, “Provide authority for the Federal Government to purchase and insure certain types of trouble assets for the purpose of providing stability to and preventing disruption in the economy and financial system and protecting taxpayers, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide incentives for energy production and conservation, to extend certain expiring provisions, to provide individual income tax relief, and for other purposes” (Emergency Economic Stabilization Act). In my paper I will explain and show the relationship between the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 and subprime lending, the collapse of the housing market, bundled mortgage securities, liquidity, and the Government 's efforts to bailout the nation 's banks.
The act requires management to disclose all material information or changes within their accounting processes. By requiring senior management to review the reports they are held accountable for the financial accounting of the firm, and procedures to prevent employees and other members within an organization from committing fraud or theft and management is legally responsible if material misstatements have been made. By making management accountable then they are less likely to commit fraud if faced with jail time. Management and stockholders frequently have different goals. Management often wishes to expand and use the company’s assets in different ways than a stockholder. Management’s accountability of the financial reports often helps encourage management to use company assets in appropriate ways. Disclosures were also a reduction in risk of fraud because all material information must be disclosed. By requiring this disclosure if a company’s net income increased this year due to a
Problem Identification: How should a company report, if at all, cash and non-cash transactions owed to an entity’s financial subsidiary?
This paper is about how did “Shadow Banking” precipitate the financial Crises. Then discusses the impacts of the crisis on the major financial institutions.
One of the primary factors that can be attributed as to have led the recent financial crisis is the financial deregulation allowing financial institutions a lot of freedom in the way they operated. The manifestation of this was seen in the form of:
In 2008, one of the worst financial crises since the Great Depression occurred. The severity of this collapse cannot be understated as demonstrated by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank in the US, and with many other financial institutions such as Merrill Lynch and the Royal Bank of Scotland having to be bailed out. In addition, the Global Banking System was within a whisker of collapsing and if it where not for the trillions of dollars invested in the system by national banks then this banking collapse would have lead to economic catastrophe. Therefore, in order to avoid such a calamity from occurring again, it is important to ask the question why did this financial recession occur and what factors contributed towards this downfall? Although there are many reasons as to why this recession occurred it could be argued that securitized lending and shadow banking played the largest role in this economic crisis. It is therefore important to understand what securitized lending and shadow banking means. Securitized lending is the process by which a financial institution such as a bank pools illiquid assets, such as residential and commercial mortgages and auto loans (by which the bank receives from the public through house mortgages and loans), and loans these newly formed short-term bonds to third party investors in exchange for cash or collateral. Since its creation in the 18th century, securitized lending was increasingly popular and very much
“Since 2007 to mid 2009, global financial markets and systems have been in the grip of the worst financial crisis since the depression era of the late 1920s. Major Banks in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe have collapsed and been bailed out by state aid”. (Valdez and Molyneux, 2010) Identify the main macroeconomic and microeconomic causes that resulted in the above-mentioned crisis and make an assessment of the success or otherwise of the actions taken by the U.K government to resolve the problem.
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
The recent financial crisis has a huge impact on systemic Important Financial Institutions; it’s distressing effect can be felt in almost every business area and process of a bank. A fairly large literature investigates the impact of financial crisis on large, complex and interconnected banks. The great recession did affect banks in different ways, depending on the funding capability of each bank. Kapan and Minoiu (2013) find that banks that were ex ante more dependent on market funding and had lower structural liquidity reduced supply of credit more than other banks during crisis. The ability of banks to generate interest income during the financial crisis was hampered because there was a vast reduction in bank lending to individuals and
The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis was a set of events that led to the 2008 financial crisis, characterized by a rise in subprime mortgage defaults and foreclosures. This paper seeks to explain the causes of the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis and how this has led to a generalized credit crisis in other financial sectors that ultimately affects the real economy. In recent decades, financial industry has developed quickly and various financial innovation techniques have been abused widely, which is the main cause of this international financial crisis. In addition, deregulation, loose monetary policies of the Federal Reserve, shadow banking system also play
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
In 2008 the world faced the worst financial crisis since the great depression. Many banks closed their doors for good that year. Among them were both small and large banks. One specific bank that collapsed that year was IndyMac, one of the largest banks in the United States. IndyMac marked the largest collapse of a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insured institution since 1984, when Continental Illinois, which had $40 billion in assets, failed, according to FDIC records (“The Fall of IndyMac 2008). This paper will talk about the cause of the collapse of IndyMac in 2008, the handling of the issues, as well as the aftermath of the collapse.
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
In this essay, we are trying to look at the factors responsible for the global financial crisis in 2008-09 which started in US and later spread across the world. By now, a lot of studies have been done on the global financial crisis of 2008. We explain briefly the role of the financial engineering which leads to combination of various financial securities, the actual risk of which is not clearly assessed and hence leading to the financial crisis. There were also some serious lapses in regulation and failure of the rating agencies in assessing the risks assumed by the financial products which accentuated the crisis.