WACHOVIA
In 1879, William Lemly opened Wachovia National Bank in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It grew to become one of the largest banks in the Southeast. In 2006, Wachovia purchase Golden West Financial for approximately $25.5 billion. The purchase was finalized before Wachovia thoroughly examined Golden West's mortgage portfolio. Wachovia entered the mortgage loan market through the Golden West acquisition, and became Wachovia Mortgage. Once in the mortgage market, the number of mortgage loans to individuals drastically increased. Many of the mortgage loans were packaged with variable interest rates. These adjustable-rate mortgages increased the original loan amount, allowing Wachovia's to earn additional revenues from the increased payments. They also received additional revenue by charging high markups on their investment services.
CONCLUSIONS
1. Wachovia should have more closely examined Golden West Financial's mortgage portfolio before the acquisition.
2. Wachovia should have checked the individual's credit history and credit score before offering variable interest rate mortgage loans.
3. Wachovia's bank leaders should not have charged their investors high markups nor should they have manipulated their financial statements to their investors.
IMPULSIVE PURCHASE
In May 2006, Wachovia purchased Golden West Financial, the second largest savings and loan, for $24.6 billion. This purchase was an effort for Wachovia to achieve its goal of coast-to-coast banking. At least one top executive at Wachovia and a Federal Reserve Analyst questioned the acquisition and felt the regulators should not have allowed it. According to some current and former Wachovia officials, the merger was agreed to in a matt...
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The Savings and Loans Crisis of the 1980’s and early 90’s created the greatest banking collapse since the Great Depression in 1929. Over half the S & L’s failed, along with the FSLIC fund that was created to insure their deposits.
One year ago, on September 8, 2016 the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau(CFPB), the Los Angeles City Attorney and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) fined Wells Fargo Bank $185 million, alleging that more than 2 million bank accounts or credit cards were opened or applied for without customers' knowledge or permission between May 2011 and July 2015. This essay will discuss the Wells Fargo scandal by explaining how the event happened and describing how the organization approached handling a response to the crisis. This will be seen, firstly by describing the how the scandal happened, and what were the causes, secondly by discussing the reaction of the company in front of the situation, how they dealt with the crisis and then
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A majority of mortgage defaults that Americans used were on subprime mortgage loans, which were high-interest-rate loans lent to people with high risk credit rates (Brue). Despite knowing the risks, the Federal government encouraged major banks to lend out these loans to buyers, in hopes, of broadening ho...
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"This is why the market keeps going down every day - investors don't know who to trust," said Brett Trueman, an accounting professor from the University of California-Berkeley's Haas School of Business. As these things come out, it just continues to build up"(CBS MarketWatch, Hancock). The memories of the Frauds at Enron and WorldCom still haunt many investors. There have been many accounting scandals in the United States history. The Enron and the WorldCom accounting fraud affected thousands of people and it caused many changes in the rules and regulation of the corporate world. There are many similarities and differences between the two scandals and many rules and regulations have been created in order to prevent frauds like these. Enron Scandal occurred before WorldCom and despite the devastating affect of the Enron Scandal, new rules and regulations were not created in time to prevent the WorldCom Scandal. Accounting scandals like these has changed the corporate world in many ways and people are more cautious about investing because their faith had been shaken by the devastating effects of these scandals. People lost everything they had and all their life-savings. When looking at the accounting scandals in depth, it is unbelievable how much to the extent the accounting standards were broken.
In this paper I will identify and analyze the Wells Fargo scandal as it pertains to the breakdown of leadership and ethics. I will first identify and analyze the event and discuss the challenges and conflicts the scandal presented. Then I will evaluate the issue by explaining why the issue has interest and concern to stakeholders followed by discussing the challenges presented to individuals and/or organizations around this case. Lastly, I will recommend action steps that should be taken to those involved as well as discuss what I have learned from exploring this topic.
The "subprime crises" was one of the most significant financial events since the Great Depression and definitely left a mark upon the country as we remain upon a steady path towards recovering fully. The financial crisis of 2008, became a defining moment within the infrastructure of the US financial system and its need for restructuring. One of the main moments that alerted the global economy of our declining state was the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on Sunday, September 14, 2008 and after this the economy began spreading as companies and individuals were struggling to find a way around this crisis. (Murphy, 2008) The US banking sector was first hit with a crisis amongst liquidity and declining world stock markets as well. The subprime mortgage crisis was characterized by a decrease within the housing market due to excessive individuals and corporate debt along with risky lending and borrowing practices. Over time, the market apparently began displaying more weaknesses as the global financial system was being affected. With this being said, this brings into question about who is actually to assume blame for this financial fiasco. It is extremely hard to just assign blame to one individual party as there were many different factors at work here. This paper will analyze how the stakeholders created a financial disaster and did nothing to prevent it as the credit rating agencies created an amount of turmoil due to their unethical decisions and costly mistakes.
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January 1970. This allowed the bank to expand and venture into new services such as credit cards and computer-linked cash dispensers. The 1980’s saw deregulation of the financial markets which eventually culminated in the ‘Big Bang’ in 1986, National Westminster Bank seized this opportunity and entered the securities business acquiring stockbroking and jobbing firms to create NatWest Investment Bank. The Group’s International Banking Division focused on expanding into international banking services and into The USA, the Far East and Europe.