From the category archives:

Countrywide Financial

Did You Say “Fraud,” Mr. Mozilo?

June 5, 2009

When Countrywide Financial’s Angelo Mozilo told a Congressional committee in 2007 that there was a lot of fraud in the subprime business, we thought at the time it might be a prophetic statement.   The Securities and Exchange Commission apparently agrees, as this week it laid civil charges of securities fraud against the company’s former [...]

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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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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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More Straight Talk, Less Fed Speak

March 12, 2008

There has not been much critique of the latest Fed move, the ninth since August, to fix the ailing credit market. We would like to remedy that with the following observation. The Fed cannot possibly continue to argue that it has given Americans and their policy makers a fair and accurate picture of the economy [...]

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Outrage of the Week: When Subprime CEOs Dissemble Before Congress

March 9, 2008

Never in modern business has so much been given to so few for such colossally failed results. In just five years, these three CEOs made more than $460 million while leading their companies into the greatest losses in their history. One of them, Charles O. Prince of Citigroup, even got a bonus of $10 million, [...]

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The Scary Subprime Thinking of Angelo Mozilo and Other Overpaid CEOs

March 7, 2008

At what point will law makers, regulators and investors see that the so-called link between performance and high CEO pay is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American public? When the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform meets today on the subject of CEO pay as it relates to Countrywide, Merrill [...]

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Nominate Your Dog to the Boardroom

February 18, 2008

If the boards of Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Société Générale, Countrywide and UBS were comprised entirely of Irish setters and beagles, it is doubtful that the subprime-plagued results of recent months could have been any worse. Some of the senior staff of Finlay ON Governance have suggested that I might have given the wrong [...]

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The Enronization of Countrywide?

January 29, 2008

Last October, when Countrywide Financial posted the first loss in its history, we expressed skepticism over the company’s claim that it would return to profitability in the fourth quarter. That quarter has come and gone and the company today announced a net loss of $421.9 million. The loss for the previous quarter was $1.2 billion. [...]

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