Posted on 06/27/2002 8:16:00 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
NEW YORK: Top banks from New York to Frankfurt to Tokyo are owed about $4.5 billion by telecommunications company WorldCom, which disclosed one of the biggest accounting scandals ever.
But WorldCom's top bank lenders, including Bank of America Corp, JP Morgan Chase & Co, and Citigroup, have refused to give it any more money, according to a source close to the matter, in a move that pushes WorldCom closer to bankruptcy.
Banks also had limited possible losses by parceling the loans out among themselves. Still, bad loans are a grave concern after a string of large US corporate bankruptcies and bank losses in economically troubled Argentina.
"The bigger concern for most people probably is what about other telecoms going forward and issues like that," said Jim Mitchell, an analyst at Putnam Lovell Securities said.
"But we've already been through quite a few of those and it's not like this has been some kind of static universe and we haven't seen this coming for quite a long time. So banks have obviously been managing their exposures down to some extent."
WorldCom, the nation's No 2 long-distance carrier, said on Tuesday that almost $4 billion of expenses had been booked improperly, inflating its cash flow and profits.
The company is teetering near bankruptcy and President
President George W Bush has called for an investigation.
JP Morgan, Citigroup and Bank of America were lead banks on a $2.65 billion line of credit drawn down by WorldCom last month, the loan-tracking service Loan Pricing Corp said on Wednesday. Loan Pricing collects, analyses and publishes loan data in databases and publications.
The loan then was syndicated to about 25 of the world's biggest banks, including Germany's Deutsche Bank AG, ABN AMRO Holding NV of the Netherlands and Japan's Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, curbing the loss any one bank would take on.
WorldCom also owes about $1.5 billion under an accounts receivables securitisation program, which enabled it to use customer bills as collateral to borrow money, Loan Pricing said. JP Morgan and Citigroup were the lead banks on this loan, Loan Pricing said.
WorldCom unit Intermedia Communications owes another $350 million in a loan deal arranged by Bank of America with Canada's Toronto-Dominion Bank and Bank of New York, Loan Pricing said.
WorldCom also has a $1.6 billion credit facility, available through June 8, 2006, and a $3.75 billion facility available until Sunday, Loan Pricing said.
The company does not appear to have borrowed from these lines, it said. Industry sources believe those credit lines are no longer available to WorldCom because of the accounting disclosures.
Banks slowly revealed the extent of their exposure to WorldCom. After the market closed, Citigroup said on Wednesday that it had exposure of at least $375 million but that the financial impact on the overall company would be relatively modest.
Citigroup, which is the country's biggest financial services company, said WorldCom bonds exposure at its life and annuity companies was $250 million, while bond exposure at its Travelers Property Casualty arm was $85 million. This is out of a $70 billion bond portfolio at its insurance units.
Citigroup also estimates it has another $40 million in possible exposure to WorldCom in other areas at the company.
JP Morgan, the No 2 US banking company, said its exposure to WorldCom is very small and would have no material effect on earnings.
The bank declined to disclose the size of its loan, but US Bancorp Piper Jaffray analyst Andy Collins estimated WorldCom losses could dent JP Morgan's earnings by 1 or 2 cents a share, or $20 million to $40 million based on the bank's outstanding shares.
Bank of America would not provide the amount it lent, but said analysts' estimates of its exposure were wrong.
The bank typically holds less than 10 per cent of a loan when it does a deal, chief financial officer Jim Hance has said in the past. Bank of America also lent money to WorldCom former Chief Executive Bernie Ebbers but WorldCom repaid the debt.
US Bancorp's Collins estimated the hit to Bank of America's earnings could be less than 5 cents a share, but Citigroup could have exposure of more than 1 cent a share because of its different businesses.
Mellon Financial Corp also said on Wednesday it has a $100 million outstanding, unsecured loan to WorldCom, as part of the $2.65 billion credit line.
Some of the other global banks originally participating in the loan may have sold their WorldCom debt because of the rocky outlook for the telecommunications sector.
Before the announcement, WorldCom was trying to renegotiate a $5 billion secured credit facility from its bankers, Loan Pricing said. But a source close to the matter said this effort had failed.
British bank Barclays Plc also has a $100 million exposure to WorldCom, another banking source said. But the loan is part of a credit line that WorldCom has not drawn down yet, the source said.
Even more worrisome than that is the possibility that other telecommunication companies might follow suit. If these folks shut down, so the does the country, and the internet.
Were I a creditor of that company, I would go straight for the throat of the auditing firm. Every go-along, get-along auditing firm should be sued into oblivion. Then, maybe, the new firms filling the void would be a lot more ethical and a little less greedy.
Firms pay millions for an audit and the audit user ends up with a flashy, well-bound pack of lies. You can no longer believe anything you read in a set of financial statements. Stocks are going to go a lot lower before investor confidence is restored in anything put out as "financial data", IMO.
I understand they lose about 16 billion a year they can't account for, and we don't seem to upset about it.
Looks like the private sector is finally following the government example for doing business.
The $1.5 billion in debt that's secured by what customers owe should be almost all recoverable. So that reduces the debt in the headline by a third.
US Bancorp's Collins estimated the hit to Bank of America's earnings could be less than 5 cents a share, but Citigroup could have exposure of more than 1 cent a share because of its different businesses.
Did anyone else notice how strange and awkward the above sentence reads?
There is a recurring theme throughout history -- it is dangerous for the vulgar to confuse themselves with (or adopt the practices of) their betters/masters.
Not according to Connie Chung. She says that Enron is the biggest. LOL!
No, these companies are not using the same accounting standards as the government. The governmental accounting standards are more lax than the private sector. I could go into the differences of accounting standards, but that would put you asleep. In addition, cash controls are non-existant, in governmental organizations, that is why the housing and urban devopment agency was able to loss $150 billion, under the Clinton administration.
What needs to happen is auditing companies need to be completely independant, from the companies that they audit. I would propose that an auditing company can not sell any other services to the company that it is auditing. Secondly, employees of auditing firms can not work for a company that they audited for a minimum of 5 years after the audit. Many of the audited companies will hire the auditors, because the auditor will know most of the secrets of the audited company.
The real question in my mind is whether clintonites spread this "hidden debt" idea to their donor base in order to create "the best (fake) economy in 50 years."
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