From the category archives:

Bear Stearns

Still Searching for Signs of Life on the Bear Stearns Board

May 4, 2010

Corporate governance at the failed Wall Street giant had all the hallmarks of a disengaged boardroom stacked with cronies and dominated by insiders. Finally, Congress can shed some light on where the board was at Bear Stearns — or if it existed at all. Former Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne will be making a rare [...]

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Crackdown in the Boardroom

June 20, 2008

Even Canada’s corporate crime cops are suddenly busy busting businessmen It was a day for the record books. Never have so many high profile former insiders in so many companies been charged with fraud on both sides of the border. The RCMP, a frequent object of criticism for its slow pace in bringing white-collar criminals [...]

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What the Fed Could Learn From a Jar of Jif Peanut Butter

May 15, 2008

We have cast a skeptical eye in recent months on the Fed’s response to the subprime meltdown, and its handling of the Bear Stearns bailout. In The Wall Street Journal today, Greg Ip writes: (subscription required) Since the credit crisis began last August, the Fed has expanded the volume and types of loans it is [...]

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Cayne and Greenberg: Two Peas in a Very Dysfunctional Bear Stearns Boardroom Pod

May 8, 2008

Much as we have long faulted James Cayne for his role in Bear’s implosion, responsibility for its ultimate failure is born by many actors, including the long-time head of its executive committee, Alan Greenberg. It proves once again that boards must actually direct. In Bear’s case, there is scant evidence that its independent directors were [...]

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Is Countrywide Sinking Too Fast for Bank of America? | Part 2

May 3, 2008

  With yet more losses and its recent credit downgrade to junk status following stunning statements by Bank of America regarding Countrywide’s debt, the question is how many icebergs will this Titanic of subprime lending need to hit before the inevitable occurs? In a posting on Tuesday this week, we suggested that Countrywide’s sinking financial [...]

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Subprime Debacle Needs Congressional Spotlight, and So Do the Regulators Who Let it Happen

May 2, 2008

Investigations by Congress in 1912, 1932 and 2002 revealed weaknesses and abuses in both the regulatory regime and in the governance of corporations that yielded major reforms. A comparable effort is needed now in the face of the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression. A trio of former SEC chairmen and a solo performance [...]

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Is Countrywide Sinking Too Fast for Bank of America? | Part 1

April 29, 2008

Conventional wisdom holds that the best time to buy a ticket on a ship -or the whole ship, for that matter- is when it is not sinking. But it is not entirely clear that Bank of America, which apparently still plans to acquire the losing Countrywide Financial, understands this principle of both physics and economics. [...]

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Risk: The Rodney Dangerfield of the Subprime Boardroom

April 22, 2008

Care about risk was not permitted to intrude upon the holiday from reality many boards chose to take in the years leading up to their subprime cataclysm, which is why the credit crisis of 2008 can be traced to a complete failure of corporate governance. There is a common theme emerging from the subprime debacle [...]

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The 29 Billion Dollar Men

April 16, 2008

If you see a lot of people going around with neck collars soon, it’s probably because they got whiplash when reading today that the top 50 hedge fund managers last year earned $29 billion. The number-one winner, John Paulson, made $3.7 billion in 2007. If the U.S. Treasury issued them, and it may have to [...]

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