Excerpt:
NYSE to Let Fannie Mae Stock Keep Trading
January 27, 2006
From The Houston Chronicle:
The New York Stock Exchange is allowing Fannie Mae's stock to continue to trade despite the embattled mortgage giant's failure to file its annual report on time, the company said Friday.
The NYSE has officially classified Fannie Mae as a late filer and could if it wished delist the stock of the government-sponsored company, which is struggling to untangle its accounting in an $11 billion scandal. The company, which finances one of every five home-mortgage loans in the United States, hasn't filed an earnings report since late 2004.
In a filing Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has ordered the company to restate earnings back to 2001, Fannie Mae said the stock exchange had granted its request to continue to list its stock. Continued listing will be subject to quarterly review by the NYSE, which will monitor the company's progress toward restating its finances.
Is It Time to Re-Cast Fannie Mae?
February 28, 2006
From Realty Times:
You knew it was coming. A just-issued 2,652-page report by former New Hampshire Senator Warren Rudman details the world inside Fannie Mae and the drive to produce financial results that would satisfy stock analysts.
The report will get a lot of media attention, but the central issue will remain untouched: How to change the quasi-government status that Fannie Mae enjoys.
"Fannie Mae is a different company than a year ago," says Daniel H. Mudd, Fannie's new President, CEO and designated clean-up hitter. "We have been humbled, even embarrassed. But we have begun to make significant changes."
Fannie Mae will give $75,000 to help Libby housing
January 26, 2006
From Havre Daily News:
Mortgage giant Fannie Mae will give $75,000 to boost housing in Libby, Mont., Montana Sen. Max Baucus announced Thursday. Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd joined in the announcement at a news conference in Washington, saying the organization will fund a housing assistance program to help people pay for their own homes. The grant will also go toward a Web site designed to help people who have financial questions and the development of a Lincoln County growth plan, among other things. Mudd said the grant was a start. “We can’t solve all the problems but we’ll do what we can,” he said. Baucus, a Democrat, said the project is one way to help the people of Libby, many of whom have been sickened by asbestos fibers released by the now-closed W. R. Grace and Co. Vermiculite mine. The vermiculite, used in a variety of household products, contained tremolite asbestos that was released into the air and carried home on miners’ clothing. It is blamed by some health authorities for killing about 200 people and sickening one of every eight Libby residents. The mine closed in 1990. The EPA has declared the area a Superfund site, and many houses have been cleaned or destroyed because of lingering asbestos fibers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._R._Grace_and_Company
Excerpt:
Contamination incidents
W. R. Grace and Company has been involved in a number of controversial incidents of proven and alleged corporate crimes, including exposing workers and residents of an entire town to asbestos contamination in Libby[19] and Troy, Montana, water contamination (the basis of the book and film A Civil Action) in Woburn, Massachusetts, and an Acton, Massachusetts, Superfund site.
[edit] Asbestos
While Grace no longer makes asbestos-related products, W. R. Grace and Company has faced more than 270,000 asbestos-related lawsuits. 150,000 lawsuits have been settled or dismissed and 120,000 remain.[20]After asbestos injury claims unexpectedly nearly doubled in 2000, W. R. Grace & Company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001. The United States Department of Justice alleged that Grace had transferred 4 to 5 billion dollars to spin-off companies it had recently purchased, shortly before declaring bankruptcy. Justice Department attorneys alleged that this amounted to a "fraudulent transfer" of money in order to protect Grace from civil suits related to asbestos. The bankruptcy court ordered the companies to return nearly $1 billion to Grace, which will remain as part of the assets to consider in the bankruptcy hearings.
The company has a history of environmental crimes, which were summarized in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on 18 November 1999, headlining "The History of W.R. Grace & Co." These crimes were the basis for the bestselling non-fiction book and popular motion picture, "A Civil Action," which concerned the pollution-destruction of neighborhoods in Massachusetts by W.R. Grace & Co.
[edit] Asbestos court case
In 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice began criminal proceedings against W.R. Grace. On February 7, 2005, the department announced that a grand jury in Montana indicted W.R. Grace and seven current and former Grace executives for knowingly endangering residents of Libby, Montana, and concealing information about the health effects of its asbestos mining operations. According to the indictment, W. R. Grace and its executives, as far back as the 1970s, attempted to conceal information about the adverse health effects of the company’s vermiculite mining operations and distribution of vermiculite in the Libby, Montana, community. The defendants are also accused of obstructing the government’s cleanup efforts and wire fraud. To date, according to the indictment, approximately 1,200 residents of Libby area have been identified as suffering from some kind of asbestos-related abnormality.[21]The criminal trial began in February 2009 after years of pretrial proceedings which reached the United States Supreme Court.[22] By the time the trial was set to begin, one of the defendants, Alan Stringer, had died of cancer.
On Friday, May 8, 2009, W.R. Grace was acquitted of "knowingly" harming the people of Libby, Montana. Fred Festa, chairman, president and CEO said in a statement, "the company worked hard to keep the operations in compliance with the laws and standards of the day." David Uhlmann, a former top environmental crimes prosecutor has been quoted as saying about the W.R. Grace: "There's never been a case where so many people were sickened or killed by environmental crime." The W.R. Grace case has long festered in the court system on a 10-count indictment including charges of wire fraud and obstruction of justice. W.R. Grace has voluntarily paid millions of dollars in medical bills for 900 Libby residents.
[edit] In popular culture
- The movie A Civil Action, starring John Travolta, was based on the Grace groundwater contamination law suits in Woburn, MA.
- The PBS television show P.O.V., which highlights independent films in August 2007 premiered the movie Libby, Montana that documents the thousands of people in Libby, Montana, that have been exposed to and are suffering the effects of exposure to asbestos. The show also discusses the criminal indictments of many Grace executives for covering up the asbestos related illnesses and deaths.
- PBS also aired "Dust to Dust", a documentary produced by Michael Brown Productions, Inc. in 2002. "Dust to Dust" reports on the more than 200 people who have died from asbestos exposure in Libby, Montana. The film focuses on the plights of several of these individuals and the damage done over almost thirty years while the mine was operated by W. R. Grace.
- NPR ran a piece on their show All Things Considered discussing the criminal charges against W. R. Grace. A U.S. attorney general alleges that the company and managers of the mine in Libby, Montana, knew about the dangers of the asbestos they were dumping into the air for over 20 years.[23]
- A University of Montana photojournalism master's thesis, Living with Grace, explored the ramifications of living with asbestosis, a disease associated with the vermiculite mine run by W.R. Grace.
- On February 19, 2008, the radio show Here and Now broadcast a story about movie Libby, Montana which details the asbestos contamination.[24]
- On April 22, 2009, the television and radio program Democracy Now! broadcast two segments on the trial of W. R. Grace and some of its employees related to the asbestos contamination in Libby, Montana.[25][26] Democracy Now! also broadcast a followup interview on May 12, 2009 with activist Gayla Benefield and Andrea Peacock, a Montana independent political and environmental journalist.[27] This interview focused on reactions to the not-guilty verdict in the federal trial, where W.R. Grace and three former executives were acquitted on charges of knowingly exposing workers and townspeople to asbestos, and subsequently participating in a cover-up.
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Mortgage Backed Securities Related News
in chronological order
See also: Mortgage Backed Securities Related Books, Mortgage Backed Securities Related Scholarly Papers, or Mortgage Backed Securities Home Page.
Table of Contents:
June 2008
June 16 - Lehman's Fuld Confident in Prospects as Firm Slashes Mortgages
June 12 - Thornburg swings to $3.3 bln loss
April 2008
April 28 - American Capital Goes For Mortgage Paper
April 27 - Citigroup, RAMS eye A$ mortgage-backed debt: sources
April 23 - Allstate feels mortgage-backed securities pain
April 21 - Australia's Central Bank Buys Mortgage-Backed Bonds (Update1)
March 2008
March 20 - The future for investing in mortgage-backed securities 2008
March 19 - RBS mortgage-backed exposure doubles to £68bn
March 12 - Asia Day Ahead: Fed to Take on Mortgage-Backed Debt (Update1)
March 11 - Carlyle founders in talks with banks to prevent fire sale of fund's mortgage-backed securities
March 5 - Reviving the mortgage market
March 4 - U.S. Commercial property bonds have worst month in Feb
February 2008
February 26 - Mortgage Backed Securities Fight Inflation
February 21 - UK mortgage-backed securities prices 'irrationally pessimistic' - economist
February 12 - Credit Suisse profits plunge on subprime losses
February 11 - S&P cuts $7.65 bln in CDOs backed by mortgages
February 4 - Freddie Looks to Grow in Apartment Financing
February 4 - Moody's To Review Australian Mortgage-Backed Securities
January 2008
January 9 - E-Trade sells $3B mgte-backed securities
January 9 - New Zealand residential mortgage-backed securities arrears fall again - S&P
December 2007
December 28 - Agency MBS to struggle in '08 as risks abound
December 28 - Darker Clouds Over Commercial Real Estate
December 19 - Bass Shorted `God I Hope You're Wrong' Wall Street (Update1)
December 17 - UPDATE 2-BBVA Mexico unit to place first mortgage-backed debt
December 12 - E*Trade Bailout Signals Trouble Ahead
December 11 - UPDATE 1-Mexico sees private mortgage-backed debt surging
December 4 - Subprime Seizure Solution May Be in Hospital Bills (Update1)
December 3 - Foreclosure-proof homes?
November 2007
November 23 - Australian Central Bank Buys Record Mortgage Bonds (Update2)
November 22 - Federated Investors bails out ailing fund
November 15 - PMI Canada to Enter Canada's Mortgage-Backed Securities Market
November 15 - Subprime test: Did securitization work?
November 6 - TEFLON TRADERS
November 5 - UPDATE 1-S&P cuts Merrill Lynch mortgage-backed deals
October 2007
October 29 - UBS warns more write-downs may be on the way
October 29 - Vultures eyeing mortgage corpse
October 22 - RBS in exclusive talks on Cheyne SIV assets: sources
October 21 - Yields drive bond sales
October 15 - Bank of America to help start fund for mortgage-backed securities
October 15 - Japan's Nomura Holdings to exit US residential mortgage-backed securities market
October 5 - Fund manager loads up on mortgage-backed bonds
October 3 - HSBC Mexico Sells Mortgage-Backed Bonds After Drought (Update2)
October 1 - Asset-backed debt sales may halve in `08: Lehman
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