To start with, in early this year, New Century was once the second largest subprime mortgage originator in the United States. However, once New York Stock Exchange delisted NCF in March this year, its market capitalization sharply decreased. I noticed NCF had flawed business model and strategies serving its business objectives. Supposedly, the business model of NCF is primary originating; bundling; servicing, and securitizing subprime mortgage loans and sells them to investors. In 2006, NCF claimed to its shareholders and public that the company’s strategic objectives include delivering strong operating performance, expanding more mortgage products and services, increasing market shares by lowering costs and improving productivity. Sadly, NCF did not keep its promises and applied wrong strategies to achieve its goals. In fact, in order to achieve its strategic objectives and improve sales, NCF ignored all the high level of risks involved in subprime loans, and ended up making as much as subprime loans to less responsible subprime borrowers, without valuating the loan quality. For example, in 2006, the loan originations were up to $60 billion without adequate consideration of related risks. Meanwhile, in order to attract more subprime borrowers, the company initiated risky mortgage products, such as interest only payments, deferred interest mortgages, etc. In short, NCF ignored the risks involved in its twisted business objectives, ignored the loan quality and it solely focused on achieving aggressive sales goals, and improving the volume of mortgage loan securitization as its primary business goals.
In NCF, the performance-based bonuses and benefits that management teams received were directly tied to the volume of the sales of ...
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...io in 2006 was ridiculously high at 1,214%, with $25.06 billion total assets and $2.06 billion equity. Clearly, NCF was operating under an extremely high leverage. Eventually, the shareholders got nothing with the decreasing value of the company’s assets and innumerable debts.
Meaningless expenditures sped up the exhaustion of cash. About $800 million in losses were simply resulted from missing documents of the loans that were rejected by its investors.
The company’s Audit Committee is also responsible for the failure of the NCF, because Audit Committee did not focus on the key issues, such as the loans quality; as well as did not closely supervise and promote accounting and financial reports’ accuracy. Unsuccessful enterprise risk management process further exposes the company to various risks. All these factors above contribute to the demise of the company.
According to Ferrell et al., (2011) the key facts and critical issues of the Countrywide Financial Meltdown were due to several different mishaps. In this case study, I have read that this organization was established to aid consumers with the ability to make purchases without a set criteria amount of revenue at their disposal. The issues came about when the customer would begin the repayment process. They start to claim they were unaware of the interest-rate because would be prudent onto the loan; they would fault the lender for late fees, excessive fees attached to their loans, and other default issues. Although these were some significant acquisitions, the institutions were permitted to rebuttal their claims. However, “another financial
...ts stakeholders and stabilized the internal culture. If compensation for the organization’s executives were tied to designated performance indicators for ARC (Lytle, 2013), the organization may actually operate more efficiently and effectively.
However, financial situation of the firm plays a very important role in the decision of the bondholder and this company has been one of the most profitable companies America in terms of ROE, ROA ad gross profit margin. Apart from decrease in earnings and cash flow in 1997, UST had continuous increases in sales (10-year compound annual growth rate of 9%), earnings (11%) and cash flow (12%). They are generating their cash flows out of the operations. Thanks to their premium pricing, they are achieving more than average gross profit margin. So, over the years UST's revenues are stable and positive, and generally its statements are positive. The company does not have any problems with its cash flow.
Looking at the individual ratios seen in exhibit 1 and comparing it to the industry average shown in exhibit 2 gives a sense of where this company stands. Current ratio and quick ratio are really low and have been decreasing. For 1995, the current ratio is 1.15:1, which is less than the industry average of 1.60:1, however to give a better sense of where this stands in the industry, as seen in exhibit 3, it is actually less than the average of the bottom 25% of the industry. The quick ratio is 0.61 is less than the industry is 0.90. Both these ratios serve to point out the lack of cash in this company. The cash flow has been decreasing because, it takes longer to get the money from customers, but the company still needs to pay for its purchases. Also, the company couldn’t go over the $400,000 loan limit, so they were forced to stretch their cash.
Management 3rd edition, Kathryn M. Bartol & David C. Martin (Boston, Massachusetts Burr Ridge, Illinois Dubuque, Iowa Madison, Wisconsin New York, New York San Francisco, California St. Louis, Missouri 2008), p36, 37, 41
In April 2010, KK BB, the CEO of Marshall & Gordon, a leading public relations firm met with the firm’s leadership committee off-site in Miami. This off-site brought together Marshall & Gordon’s executive committee, practice and regional heads, and senior HR officers to discuss on redesigning the firm’s compensation system. A global advisory taskforce, under the direction of an external consulting firm, had spent three months collecting and analyzing data. Marshall & Gordon hired external specialists to design the new performance management program. The specialists proposed that the senior managers and human resource form a global advisory unit together with Marshall & Gordon partner to represent the firm’s five regions of the firm and lead the design process. The advisory unit surveyed all consultants in February in order to understand their way of thinking about the fairness, worth, and effect of the current performance management system. Majority of the interviewees responded to the corporate surveys implying that the subject was topic was especially exciting to them. Interviews gave insights on present and prospective business plans and direction. The survey also showed that specific focus across certain employee populations should be given. Six current hires from key competitors were also interviewed to comprehend competitor pay practices and compensation program structures. Further focus groups discussions and key information interviews enabled the taskforce’s to understand the needs of certain groups within Marshall & Gordon’s worker population. The survey culminated with the taskforce conducting interviews of 20 partners and principals togeth...
After reviewing Holland’s organizational strategy and exit interviews from the last seven years it is certain that through the new and effective compensation and benefits program created for Holland Enterprises, it will decrease the turnover rate, increase employee satisfaction and engagement and benefit the organization’s overall profits. Through careful consideration of pay structures, incentive awards, internal and external equities and the organizations benefits package Holland Enterprises new compensation benefits package will provide an effective and competitive compensation program. Henderson (2010) writes, “To survive and be successful in a global economy, an organization must be competitive. A major factor underlying organizational competitiveness is labor costs. Not only must an organization pay its workforce a competitive wage within its geographic region, but it also must vary the kinds and amounts of rewards offered, recognizing differences in individual contributions.” (p. 13)
The Newham Company is a publicly traded company that recently has had a change in executive management due to an inappropriate bonus structure based on company performance. As this type of bonus structure often leads to material misstatement of facts resulting in falsified financial reports, the new management at Newham has commissioned SNHU INC. to conduct an audit which assesses their risk of misstatement. The audit to follow will be broken down into three parts: Overall business risk, sample audit plan and a report of recommendations based audit results.
Companies. Retrieved July 4, 2008, from University of Phoenix, MMPBL-501 Web site. University of Phoenix . ( 2008). Economics for Managerial Decision Making
The forced liquidation of some $3 trillion in private label structured assets has been deprived from the financial markets and the U.S. economy has obtained a vast amount of liquidity that the banking system simply cannot restore. It is not as easy to just assign blame within these case however it is noted that the credit rating agencies unethical decisions practices helped add onto the financial crisis of 2008 and took into account the company’s well-being before any other stakeholders.
Mortgage loans are a substantial form of revenue for the financial industry. Mortgage loans generate billions of dollars in the financial industry. It is no secret that companies have the ability to make a lot of money by offering a variety of mortgage loan products. The problem was not mortgage loans but that mortgage companies were using unethical behavior to get consumer mortgage loans approved. Unfortunately, the Countrywide Financial case was not an isolated case. Many top name mortgage companies have been guilty of unethical behavior. Just as the American housing market was starting to recover from its worst battering since the Great Depression, a new scandal, an epidemic of flawed or fraudulent mortgage documents, threatens to send not just the housing market but the entire economy back into a tailspin (Nation, 2010).
Organizations that only have top management as the board members are more susceptible to accounting malpractices. Members of the board should preferably own shares in the company to ensure diligence when it comes to the interests of the company. Apart from the Board of Governors, there should also be an audit committee in place to oversee the financial dealings of the bank. Members of the board and the audit committee should have basic financial knowledge. Some of the members should also be experts in finances so that they can detect any anomaly that may take place in terms of financial reporting. An overhaul of the regulatory framework is required to empower authorities to intervene immediately, and make improvements. New technology is required. Manual antiquated processes should be eliminated because this causes greater human error and poor
The oversight responsibilities of the board, the CAE lacking of expertise or broad understanding of financial controls and responsibilities, and the understaffed internal audit functions lacking of independence and direct access to the board of directors contributed to the absence of internal controls. To begin with, the board should be retrained to achieve financial literacy to review financial reporting. Other than attending formal meetings, the board of directors should be more involved with the management. For the Audit Committee, the two members who were recruited as acquaintances to Brennahan need be replaced with experts who are more sufficiently knowledgeable about accounting rules beyond merely “financially literate”. Furthermore, the internal audit functions need to expand with different expertise commensurate with the expanded activities of the organization, testing financial reporting rather than internal controls from an operational perspective. The CAE should be more independent and proactive to execute audit plans, instead of following orders from the CFO, and initiate a direct and efficient communication between internal audit and audit
The audit risk is consists of three elements which are inherent risk, control risk and detection risk. The audit model is important to the audit process. The audit risk model provides the basic for the current emphasis on the risk-based audit approach and it assists the auditor in determining the scope of auditing procedures for a particular account balance or class of transactions. Based on the assessed risk, the auditor may determine whether the use of more tests of control or substantive procedures is appropriate to address the
OLLIER-MALATERRE, ARIANE; ROTHBARD, NANCY P.; BERG, JUSTIN M. Academy of Management Review (Oct2013), Vol. 38 Issue 4