Posted on 03/03/2017 9:10:00 AM PST by blam
The market was caught offguard by yesterday's dramatic raid of three Caterpillar offices, including its Peoria Headquarters, which reportedly included agents from the IRS, FDIC and Commerce Department, and sent the stock tumbling by the most in over half a year. The raid took place just one week after former CAT CEO Doug Oberhelman met with Donald Trump, which prompted the president to say that he "loves" Caterpillar.
While the catalyst behind the raid still remains unclear, we reminded readers yesterday that this was not the first time CAT has gotten in trouble with the authorities: back in 2014 CAT and PWC got in trouble before Congress for evading taxes using offshore locations when this infamous line came up: "What the heck, we’ll all be retired when this audit comes up on audit."
And while we await more details, overnight the WSJ reported that Caterpillar's new CEO apologized to the firm’s employees and pledged to continue cooperating with federal authorities following the raid.
“We were surprised by today’s actions primarily because we have been so cooperative with the authorities in this investigation,” CEO Jim Umpleby said in an internal memo to employees, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “We will continue to work toward a resolution of these matters, just as we did today.”
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
Wasn’t Trump supposed to visit there and cancelled?
The fallen SEAL’s dad retired from Caterpillar, I think I read. Not that he has anything to do with this.
I live in Peoria. The raid was a big deal. We don't often get that much excitement around here. Cat allegedly was making sales through a foreign subsidiary and dodging taxes. The raid was a search warrant to gather documents.
Trump wasn't coming here, but was at a Caterpillar dealer recently somewhere else.. And yes,the fallen SEAL was from Peoria and his dad a retired Cat worker.
I remember fondly being called in to analyze a proposed loan modification on a commercial loan. The borrowers wanted to reduce their $40MM loan down to $17MM. Within a few hours, I had numerous questions for the borrowers to answer (from a review of their tax returns). Within a day, they "revised" their request to $28 million, which was close to the FMV of the property.
The offer was accepted, as the FDIC's objective was to replenish the Deposit Insurance Fund as quickly as possible. When we closed that particular bank, a huge loss was estimated for that loan, which was delinquent at the time.
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