Introduction In September 2008, the stock market crashed. The bursting of the U.S housing bubble caused the values of securities tied up to U.S real estate pricing to plummet, damaging financial markets globally. The complex relationship of policies that encourage home ownership, providing easier access to loan, overvaluation of toxic sub-prime mortgages, questionable trading practises and compensation structures that prioritise short term profit over long term sustainable value creation triggered a financial crisis that still has not been resolved. The world’s financial markets were in meltdown. The consequences of the 2008 financial crisis are far-reaching. Not only did it damage the financial service industry itself, but also the governments. But the worse off were individuals. As financial organisations collapsed one after another, people lost their jobs, their pensions, investments and savings. After all, we were all affected by it as a consumer of financial products. The public lost their faith in financial services industry. Many reasons for the 2008 financial crisis have been suggested; high risk complex products, lack of transparency, undisclosed conflicts of interest, the failure of regulators and credit rating agencies and systematic failures of corporate governance and risk management within the organisations. Although the cause for the 2008 crisis is evidently a combination of the above, it could be argued, that the underlying cause of the crisis was a complete collapse of ethical behaviour across the Financial Services industry. This essay looks at the Agency Theory and the issue of executive remuneration arising from it in the context of Financial Services Industry. It highlights the ethical issues surr... ... middle of paper ... .... Corporate social responsibility is high on the companies’ agenda. More robust corporate governance is introduced. The governments globally have tightened regulations with the attempt to ensure systems are place for risk control and to restore faith in financial services industry. However, judging by the number of scandals since the crisis, it does not appear to be working because the underlying issues with corporate culture and behaviour remain unaddressed. Although the industry is working hard to change the pre-crisis culture, for change to be permanent, it requires a concentrated effort of all parties - regulators, corporations and individuals - to establish and strengthen a culture of integrity. This will not happen overnight. It will require years of persistent and continuous effort from all parties involved to create a lasting change in financial markets.
The financial crisis of 2007–2008 is considered by many economists the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This crisis resulted in the threat of total collapse of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments, and downturns in stock markets around the world. The crisis led to a series of events including: the 2008–2012 global recessions and the European sovereign-debt crisis. The reasons of this financial crisis are argued by economists. The performance of the Federal Reserve becomes a focal point in this argument.
The year 2008 was a very scary one for anyone involved in the US stock market. Due to subprime lending, and cheap mortgages, the housing market became grossly overinflated. Naturally, as with a balloon that’s filled too much, it “popped”. The resulting collapse of the housing bubble had severe implications for the rest of the US economy, housing, and related industries such as lumber, construction, and realty all came crashing down, and the people employed in those fields soon found themselves out of work. As with the stock market crash of 1929, fear of the economic instability caused people to pull their money out of any investments they had. This can be a problem for a healthy bank, being unable to supply the money people are requesting if it’s tied up in loans. However, this would prove to be an even bigger problem if the money never existed in the first place, and would take down one of the largest scams in American history.
After a generation of portfolio managers and investors profiting from decades of favorable returns on stocks, they believed the modern economy was impervious to major calamities (“Rethinking” 20). As inflation rates fell from record highs in the late 1970s and early 1980s to the record lows that they are today, interest rates followed, enabling Americans to borrow more money from lenders which, in turn, increased housing prices to all-time highs (“Rethinking” 21).
5) Why was Canada able to avoid most of the repercussions of the 2008 Financial Crisis? Your answer should delve into the historical development of both systems.
The years 2008 shined a light on a group of people who were considered high society. When the stock market crashed in September 2008, the world shines a spotlight on the financial corporation. Words such as hedge fund manager and financial instrument such as credit default swaps are not words not known to everyday citizens. The economic downturn forced society to ask question not normally asked.
In the early 2000’s the housing market boomed, real estate was a hot investment and everyone was looking to buy a home. However not everyone can afford a home and a majority of people were forced to take out a mortgage to purchase real estate. During the housing boom banks were supplying subprime loans and upping the risk in the real estate market. These loans were not only risky but irresponsible on the part of the banks’ lending them, and although individuals receiving the loans thought they were being helped at the time, these loans were a major reason why so many people their homes, almost crippling toe U.S economy as a whole.
Investment banks, Rating agencies and Insurance companies are key components of the financial market. In this presentation, I’m going to explain how these three key roles worked together to create the 2008 financial crisis.
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.
Financialization is a complex process that labels global finance as the dominant force that drives all economic and political bearings. In order to understand this concept and the process of how financialization works, this essay will evaluate and assess how the collapse of the housing market led to the fiancial crisis in 2008. According to Economic Geography a contemporary introduction, financialization “is when all sorts of things are transformed into financial instruments for trading among individuals and firms in the international capital markets. Through financialization, fixed properties such as housing are financialized into structured investment vehicles such as mortgages—back securities that can be easily traded among global investors through a variety of financial institutions” (Coe, Kelly, and Yeung, 2013). Trading mortgages, or shares at the global level proved to be a financial disaster for many involved. Ultimately the collateralized debt obligation market collapsed and thus dragged down the entire global financial market.
The recent Global Financial Crisis (GFC) initially began with the collapse of credits and financial markets, which caused by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US in 2007. The sub-prime mortgages were given to high-risk lenders (with bad credit history) who were in danger of defaulting, which eventually caused a global credit crunch, where the banks were unwilling to lend to each other. In October 2008, the collapse of the major financial institutions and the crash of stock markets marked the peak of this global economic slowdown (Euromonitor International, 2008).
In conclusion, we feel that the recommendation we have suggested in this report is a suitable foundation to build a sustainable and prudent financial system in this country. This will facilitate the financial industry both, withdraw out of this crisis and in the future avoid as much as possible inducing the scale of matters at present. As the report suggest, everyone contributed in their own miniscule way to this crisis, we feel that it’s up to every one of us to contribute to the overall recovery of this financial crises and recovery of the nation in general.
As a result of modern corporate scandals and rapid development of international business environments, social responsibility (SR) has become a key aspect of corporate competitive contexts. (Brammer, Williams and Zinkin, 2007). Businesses are under increasing pressure to incorporate SR amongst their profit-driven aims and have become increasingly accountable for their social and environmental actions. Increased interest in CSR developed in the mid 1990s as consumers began to lack their former trust in companies due to both environmental and financial scandals and it became noticeable that society was moving towards values incorporating harmony, quality of life and environmental conservation (Carrasco, 2007) Additionally, major corporate failures over the past two decades have resulted in increased demand for stronger, corporate governance (CG) rules. (Sui, Wright & Evans, 2007). Superior CG rules are needed in order to preserve the integrity of corporations, financial institutions and markets and the health and stability of world economies. (OECD Website)
This paper discusses the role of ethics in corporate governance. I seek to show the application of moral and ethical principles in corporate governance. Ethics is a topic that has generated a lot of interest in the last decade especially after high profile scandals. The failures of prominent companies such as WorldCom, Enron, Merrill lynch and Martha Stewart portrays the lack of corporate ethics. The failure of such business has seen an increased pressure to incorporate ethics in corporate governance. The result of corporate scandals has been eroding investor and public confidence. The entire economic system has experienced some form of stress from loss of capital, a falling stock market and business failures.
Corporate Social Responsibility is management’s obligation to protect and promote their stakeholders welfare. Social Responsibility is more than just obvious ethical issues like honesty and integrity in business dealings.
Corporate Social Responsibility is an organisation’s obligation to serve the company’s own interest and the one’s of the society. Moreover, Corporate Social Responsibility has a definition of a concept where the companies integrate social and the environmental concerns into their own business operation and also on a basis of voluntary with their interactions they have with the stakeholders. Corporate Social Resp...