Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin AbdulAziz Alsaud.
All that money and he can't even afford a new tablecloth?! GAG!
Posted on 07/22/2002 11:39:57 AM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Radio and I just see FOX reporting this. Big lender to worldcom and other giants...in trouble.Markets now back to falling...here we go.
Reports higher profits on July 17.
Prince invests more July 18.
Announce problems July 22.
Stratergery?
Investigators for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said Enron, bankrupt since December, obtained $8.5 billion in financing from 1992 to 2001 from Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Inc., which collected hefty fees and interest payments.
The subcommittee, chaired by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said it would provide extensive details at Capitol Hill hearings scheduled to be held on Tuesday and next week, promising to shed more light on the flood of corporate scandal inundating Wall Street.
"The maze of financial transactions that Enron constructed to make its financial statements look good makes Rube Goldberg look like a slacker," Michigan's Levin said in a statement.
The commodity trades were known as "prepay" transactions. Enron booked proceeds from them as cash flow from operations, but should have booked it as debt, the committee said.
"Certain financial institutions knowingly participated in, and indeed facilitated, transactions that Enron officials used to hide debt and, thereby, make the company's financial position appear stronger than it actually was," Sen. Susan Collins, of Maine, the committee's ranking Republican.
Besides Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase, subcommittee staffers said smaller deals worth $1 billion in total involved Credit Suisse Group Inc., Barclays Plc, FleetBoston Financial Corp., Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Toronto-Dominion Bank.
Shares in all seven financial institutions fell on Monday on stock exchanges in New York, London, Zurich and Toronto, as markets swooned again amid widening investor mistrust.
Since the collapse of Enron, mounting scandals have hammered corporate America, including Sunday's record-setting bankruptcy filing of WorldCom Inc., the long-distance telephone and Internet traffic carrier.
Citigroup and JP Morgan were not immediately available for comment. A J.P. Morgan spokeswoman told The Washington Post the Enron prepays were commonplace and met accounting rules. A Citigroup spokesman told The New York Times the deals were "entirely appropriate" based on the bank's knowledge then of Enron.
Robert Bennett, a lawyer for Enron, was quoted by The Post as saying the company would continue to cooperate with various investigations and people should not "rush to judgement."
The subcommittee said it found that in 2000 Enron's total debt would have been 40 percent higher, and its funds from operations 50 percent lower, if not for the prepay deals, which helped to support its credit rating and its stock price.
The banks knew about this, and helped Enron hide its debt by letting it do complex, prepay trades through offshore, bank-controlled special-purpose entities, investigators said.
Massive class-action lawsuits filed this spring by Enron investors and former employees have named as defendants Citigroup, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Barclays and other leading banks, alleging they schemed with former Enron executives to bilk investors out of tens of billions of dollars.
Massive class-action lawsuits filed this spring by Enron investors and former employees have named as defendants Citigroup, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Barclays and other leading banks, alleging they schemed with former Enron executives to bilk investors out of tens of billions of dollars.
Fraud!!
I have a Citibank card too. Very interesting...one would think that they'd be knocking on every door...but if they tank because of this, how would they be able to collect outstanding debt, and how would they pay for it? You'd think that another big time bank would just buy them out (MBNA/Chase Manhattan) and instead of writing out payments to Citi you'd write them out to another bank. Is that economically feasible? Like to hear someone in the banking industry explain that scenario to me!
All that money and he can't even afford a new tablecloth?! GAG!
Question for the group...
Anyone have any idea what the name of these BANK CONTROLLED ENTITIES were???
By AMY BALDWIN
AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — If investors haven't thrown in the proverbial towel yet, they must be getting close — right?
That's what big selloffs like this week's would suggest, what with the Dow industrials dropping nearly 580 points since Monday. That included a 282-point drop Wednesday, the blue chips' biggest one-day loss since September, and their first close below 9,000 since October.
The market's losses are no doubt stunning. But, ``to get the stock market back on track, we have to work on the emotions of investors,'' said Thomas F. Lydon, president of Global Trends Investments in Newport Beach, Calif.
Wall Street observers like Lydon warn there's no reason for investors put a stop to their widespread dumping of stocks, which has been in force for nearly eight weeks now.
``This market has completely broken the spirit of investors,'' said Al Mirman, strategist at V Finance in Sarasota, Fla. ``It is going to take a good year for investors' confidence to be reinstated.''
Forget about an earnings recovery, analysts say, because investors aren't going to start buying stocks again until they see an end in sight to the corporate accounting scandals.
``True, we need better (earnings) numbers, but we need numbers we can trust,'' Mirman said.
The Dow last closed below 9,000 on Oct. 2 when it stood at 8,950.59 as it was still recovering from its post-Sept. 11 losses. Before the terror attacks, the Dow had not had a lower finish since Dec. 16, 1998, when it stood at 8,790.60.
Wednesday's loss was the Dow's biggest one-day decline since Sept. 20, when it fell 382.92. The blue chips fell nearly 12 more points on Thursday.
Meanwhile, through Thursday, the Standard & Poor's 500 was down more than 60 points for the week and the Nasdaq composite index off more than 70. The S&P has closed at levels not seen since November 1997, while the Nasdaq has had its lowest close since May 1997.
This week's trading has brought new reasons to question the strength and pace of a business recovery.
For example, General Motors and Ford have been hit by brokerage downgrades. Investors are feeling that there are few, if any, safe havens in the market.
Investors might not be happy sitting on Wall Street's sidelines, but with the problem-ridden market headed for a third straight losing year they see no reason to budge. After a string of accounting debacles at such firms as WorldCom, Xerox and Enron and more than two years of declines on Wall Street, investors can't be blamed for sitting on Wall Street's sidelines.
Lydon said, ``Confidence is so low that the average investor is saying, 'I am fine keeping (my money) in a money market account at 1.5 percent. And when I see the worst is over, maybe I'll think about putting more money in the stock market.''
"Uncle" Bob, Xlintoon's impeachment defense attorney??
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