MCI, Inc. was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second-largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. WorldCom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunications companies, including MCI Communications in 1998, and filed bankruptcy in 2002 after an accounting scandal, in which several executives, including CEO Bernard Ebbers, were convicted of a scheme to inflate the company's assets. In January 2006, the company, by then renamed MCI, was acquired by Verizon Communications and was later integrated into Verizon Business.
In finance, a loan is the transfer of money by one party to another with an agreement to pay it back. The recipient, or borrower, incurs a debt and is usually required to pay interest for the use of the money.
Bank fraud is the use of potentially illegal means to obtain money, assets, or other property owned or held by a financial institution, or to obtain money from depositors by fraudulently posing as a bank or other financial institution. In many instances, bank fraud is a criminal offence. While the specific elements of particular banking fraud laws vary depending on jurisdictions, the term bank fraud applies to actions that employ a scheme or artifice, as opposed to bank robbery or theft. For this reason, bank fraud is sometimes considered a white-collar crime.
Asset-based lending is any kind of lending secured by an asset. This means, if the loan is not repaid, the asset is taken. In this sense, a mortgage is an example of an asset-based loan. More commonly however, the phrase is used to describe lending to business and large corporations using assets not normally used in other loans. Typically, the different types of asset-based loans include accounts receivable financing, inventory financing, equipment financing, or real estate financing Asset-based lending in this more specific sense is possible only in certain countries whose legal systems allow borrowers to pledge such assets to lenders as collateral for loans.
Dynegy Inc. is an electric company based in Houston, Texas. It owns and operates a number of power stations in the U.S., all of which are natural gas-fueled or coal-fueled. Dynegy was acquired by Vistra Corp on April 9, 2018. The company is located at 601 Travis Street in Downtown Houston. The company was founded in 1984 as Natural Gas Clearinghouse. It was originally an energy brokerage, buying and selling natural gas supplies. It changed its name to NGC Corporation in 1995 after entering the electrical power generation business.
In public corporate finance, a critical accounting policy is a policy of a firm or industry which is considered to have a notably high subjective element, and that has a material impact on the organization's financial statements. Such policies are often mandated to be described in detail in specific sections of a company's annual or quarterly reports. Adopting specific accounting policies and procedures is one method organization's use to ensure adequate controls and transparency in financial reporting, to minimize the risk of fraud.
The Schabir Shaik trial was an important court trial in post-apartheid South Africa. The case, tried in the Durban and Coast Local Division of the High Court before Judge Hilary Squires, established a fraudulent and corrupt relationship between Durban-based businessman Schabir Shaik and former South African leader Jacob Zuma.
Refco was a New York City-based financial services company, primarily known as a broker of commodities and futures contracts. It was founded in 1969 by Raymond Earl Friedman as Ray E. Friedman and Co. Prior to its collapse in October, 2005, the firm had over $4 billion in approximately 200,000 customer accounts, and it was the largest broker on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The firm's balance sheet at the time of the collapse showed about $75 billion in assets and a roughly equal amount in liabilities. Though these filings have since been disowned by the company, they are probably roughly accurate in showing the firm's level of leverage.
BAWAG P.S.K. is the fourth largest bank in Austria. It was formed on October 1, 2005 by the merger of the separate banks P.S.K. and BAWAG.
Loan origination is the process by which a borrower applies for a new loan, and a lender processes that application. Origination generally includes all the steps from taking a loan application up to disbursal of funds. For mortgages, there is a specific mortgage origination process. Loan servicing covers everything after disbursing the funds until the loan is fully paid off. Loan origination is a specialized version of new account opening for financial services organizations. Certain people and organizations specialize in loan origination. Mortgage brokers and other mortgage originator companies serve as a prominent example.
NextCard, Inc. was a United States company that was one of the first issuers of credit cards online, and the first to offer instant online approval. Its headquarters were located in San Francisco, California and maintained offices in Livermore, California and at 44th St. and Van Buren in Phoenix, Arizona. The issuing bank was known as NextBank and was fully owned by NextCard, Inc.
BAWAG was a bank in Austria founded in 1922. On October 1, 2005, it merged with the separate Österreichische Postsparkasse (P.S.K.) to form the "Bank für Arbeit und Wirtschaft und Österreichische Postsparkasse AG", shortened as BAWAG P.S.K. In October 2017, BAWAG Group AG, the holding company of BAWAG P.S.K., became a listed company on the Vienna Stock Exchange. Largest shareholders are GoldenTree Asset Management (21.8%) and T. Rowe Price (5.6%).
Mortgage fraud refers to an intentional misstatement, misrepresentation, or omission of information relied upon by an underwriter or lender to fund, purchase, or insure a loan secured by real property.
Polly Peck International (PPI) was a small British textile company which expanded rapidly in the 1980s and became a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index before collapsing in 1991 with debts of £1.3bn, eventually leading to the flight of its CEO, Asil Nadir to Northern Cyprus in 1993. Polly Peck was one of several corporate scandals that led to the reform of UK company law, resulting in the early versions of the UK Corporate Governance Code.
The Enron scandal was an accounting scandal involving Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas. Upon being publicized in October 2001, the company declared bankruptcy and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen – then one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world – was effectively dissolved. In addition to being the largest bankruptcy reorganization in U.S. history at that time, Enron was cited as the biggest audit failure.
David Kenneth Drumm is an Irish banking executive. He was the Chief Executive Officer of Anglo Irish Bank from 2005 until 2008. In 2018, he was convicted of fraud for actions during his time there related to the Anglo Irish Bank hidden loans controversy.
MF Global, formerly known as Man Financial, was a major global financial derivatives broker, or commodities brokerage firm that went bankrupt in 2011. MF Global provided exchange-traded derivatives, such as futures and options as well as over-the-counter products such as contracts for difference (CFDs), foreign exchange and spread betting. MF Global Inc., its broker-dealer subsidiary, was a primary dealer in United States Treasury securities. A series of perceived liquidity problems and large fines and penalties dogged MF Global starting in 2008, and led to its bankruptcy in 2011.
FXCM, also known as Forex Capital Markets, is a retail foreign exchange broker for trading on the foreign exchange market. FXCM allows people to speculate on the foreign exchange market and provides trading in contract for difference (CFDs) on major indices and commodities such as gold and crude oil. It is based in London.
International Investment Group (IIG) is an American financial institution that specializes in short-term trade finance and commercial finance with a focus on emerging markets. Through its affiliate IIG Capital it provides financing to small and medium-sized merchants, traders and processors with a need for supply chain financing.
Between May 2006 and the end of 2012 there were sixty-seven finance company collapses in New Zealand; including companies entering into liquidation, receivership or moratoria. An inquiry by the New Zealand Parliament estimated losses at over $3 billion that affected between 150,000 and 200,000 depositors. The most high-profile collapses were South Canterbury Finance, Hanover Finance and Bridgecorp Holdings. The collapse radically reduced the size and importance of the non-bank finance sector in New Zealand. According to the Reserve Bank, at the height of financial expansion prior to the 2007 crisis, non-bank lenders had assets of about $25 billion and made up 8 percent of lending by financial institutions. By late 2013 the size of the finance sector was half its previous size and accounted for only 3 percent of institutional lending. In the years following the beginning of the collapses, sweeping legislative and regulatory changes were made, aimed at improving oversight and regulation of the finance industry.
