Countrywide Financial is a large expanded financial service provider. They operate in five business divisions, those being mortgage, banking, capital markets, insurance, and global operations. Countrywide was the leading market share among the United States mortgage originators before unethical activities caused the collapse of the firm. Problems in Countrywide’s loan practices were apparent. After the financial crisis of 2008 Countrywide was found to be a noteworthy contributor to the subprime mortgage debacle. Bank of America was in a position to acquire Countrywide, but they would have to make some enormous scale ethical changes to the way they functioned.
Countrywide wanted to be the major real estate mortgage originator in the United
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First, they were using predatory lending practices. Predatory loans were any loans that a debtor would have rejected with a full understanding of the terms of the loan and the available changes. Establishing loans with this practice usually were successful due to unethical tactics like dishonesty, manipulation, and deception. This would persuade debtors to agree to terms that were unethical or dishonest. Next, Countrywide was masking information from the shareholders by supporting prime quality mortgages, but they were actually using an increasingly reckless lending practice with high risk. The risk associated with each loan increased as senior executives knowingly allowed risky mortgages to be …show more content…
Bank of America would need to make some extreme changes at Countrywide if they wanted to make a profit with the acquisition. Bank of America should separate itself from the previous unethical affiliates and ensure the clienteles and the government that they will help with investigations in any way possible. Bank of America needs to establish a accurate risk management policy and other programs that will help ease the impact of long term loans and help debtors from losing their homes. An ethical policy needs to be recognized that includes the one strike rule for managers that carry out unethical practices like predatory loans or false reporting. Debtors will need to provide credentials of income and employment to prove that they can afford the mortgage agreement they are trying to establish. A debtor risk evaluation program should be recognized that will show lenders when a loan is too risky to approve. Adjustable rate mortgages should be removed as they have a history of being abused or leaving homeowners with mortgages they can no longer afford. Interest rates need to be established at the time of the mortgage agreement, and the debtor made fully aware of how the interest rate is established and the circumstances that would need to occur in order for any adjustments to be made. Countrywide made some enormous mistakes related to the ethics of their everyday
... could have such an impact after three decades of virtually innocuous existence. Pundits point to the 1995 CRA regulatory changes passed by congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. These changes strengthened the standards by which CRA regulators were able to judge banks on how well they were serving the credit needs of their local community. However in 2004, President George Bush repealed most of these changes, and weakened the CRA to where it had been in the early-90’s. It is simply implausible that the CRA had no negative ramifications until 30 years after it was passed. If it were a substantial cause of horrific lending standards, the financial crisis would have occurred much earlier than 2007. There must have been other, much larger contributing factors that arose in the 30 years after the CRA was enacted that led to the housing crash.
Leading up to the crisis of the housing market, borrowers got mortgages without understanding the terms. Banks were giving out loans to people the banks weren't sure could pay the money back. The closer to the crisis, the higher the frequency of illegitimate loans and mortgages. Because there were so many mortgages on houses that could not be paid back, millions of mortgages were foreclosed on, and the houses we...
Countrywide’s business tactic was “Fund ‘em”. If a person does not have a job, or any assets the answer was still “Fund ‘em”. This is a practice called subprime lending which allows loan...
Gaughan, P. A., 2002. Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate restructuring. 3rd ed.New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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).
Credit structure was another factor; farmers were indebt owing land mortgage and crop prices too low to ever help pay of the due. Small & large banks in trouble as in 1920’s customers defaulted on loans that suffered because of the market crash.
...dditionally, the merger can take place in smaller phases. For instance the first phase may include change of the physical look of the branches and the signage - – so as to convey a consistent view and experience for its customers. This phase may also include effective communication to the employees to educate them about the merger, ensure them of their positions and encourage them to participate in the merger. Second, the firm can totally combine the bank’s technology and the information systems which will allow the merged firm to operate as a single entity and to become fully operational. The management should implement the merger with care and prudence, aiming for minimal disruption for the customers and should communicate extensively to ensure all its stakeholders are kept fully informed as they make changes.
Freddie Mac is in the home mortgage business. It is their jobs to help low income families find affordable housing. Freddie Mac has been in business since 1970. They were created in order to get more American families in to their own homes. Their mission statement says, “Our statutory mission is to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the U.S. housing market” (FreddieMac.com, 2014). Despite this honorable mission statement, Freddie Mac was involved in a case of accounting fraud that went on from 1998 to 2002. The lack of ethics at this company started with top brass setting the tone, and the rest of the company following suit.
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.
In the first part, “the foundation” is explained and details about the five main dominating banks. The rating agencies are discussed as well as they do not have a reliable rating system for financial institutions. The second part is about the “mortgage boom” in US and how it leaded toward the debt burden and how money is created out of thin air. The third part is about “the crisis” which was warned by advisers
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.
Many of the “Elite” financial figures could not give a definite answer about why this crisis occurred as well as stated by many of the people interviewed, “We don’t know how it happened.” Many young brokers working for JP Morgan back in the middle of the 90’s believed they could come up with a way to cut risk, credit derivatives. Credit Derivatives are just a way of using other methods to separate and transfer risk to someone else other than the vender and free up capital. They tested their experiment with Exxon Mobile who were facing millions of dollars in damage for the Valdez Oil Spill back in 1989 by extending their line of credit. This also gave birth to credit default swaps (CDS) which a company wants to borrow money from someone who will buy their bond and pay the buyer back with interest over time. Once the JP Morgan and Exxon Mobile credit default swap happened, others followed in their path and the CDS began booming throughout the 90’s. The issue was that many banks in...
Mergers and acquisitions immediately impact organizations with changes in ownership, in ideology, and eventually, in practice. There are multiple reasons, motives, economic forces and institutional factors that can, taken together or in isolation, influence corporate decisions to engage in mergers or acquisitions. The financial risks of merging with or acquiring an organization in another country and how those risks can be mitigated are important issues for corporations to conduct research on. This paper will examine the sensible and dubious reasons for mergers and acquisitions and the benefits and costs of the cash and stock transactions.
Recently, three individuals were awarded $170 million for helping investigators gather a record $16.65 billion penalty against Bank of America. Based on their action of inflating the value of mortgage properties and selling defective loans to investors. By influencing the market falsely is unethical and wrong. That is also why their punishment was so harsh. Firms today warn their managers and employees that failing to report unethical behavior and violations by others, could get them fired.
Corruption and Globalisation - Both of them have been so pervasive in recent years. According to a BBC survey, corruption ranked as the second biggest problem people concern in the world and globalisation ranked first. Are there any links between the two? To what extend they are related to each other? And what effect do they have?