GE’s slogan couldn’t have been much truer than this.
The D & O Diary-
In a January 12, 2012 opinion that quotes from (and relies upon) former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s credit crisis memoirs, Southern District of New York Judge Richard Holwell granted in part and denied in part the motion to dismiss in the subprime and credit crisis related securities class action lawsuit that investors had filed against General Electric, certain of its directors and officers, and its offering underwriters. A copy of Judge Holwell’s opinion can be found here.
Background
As discussed in greater detail here, the plaintiffs first filed their action in March 2009, alleging that the company had failed to disclose information regarding the company’s health and the health of its financial subsidiary, GE Capital, at the height of the financial crisis. As Judge Holwell summarized it, the plaintiffs allege that “during a time when the financial markets were crumbling and companies across the United States were scrambling to disclose their holdings in subprime loans, GE withheld information regarding its substantial holdings in subprime and non-investment grade loans and touted GE as safe in comparison to its competitors, despite the fact that GE was also feeling the impact of the financial crisis.”
Michael Hudson, continues his great series into the subprime fraud mess, this time GE’s turn!
iWATCH-
For General Electric Co., hawking subprime mortgages was a long way from making light bulbs and jet engines.
That didn’t stop the industrial giant from jumping into the subprime business in 2004, lending blue-chip respectability to the market for risky home loans by paying roughly half a billion dollars to buy California-based WMC Mortgage Corp.
What GE got in the bargain, former WMC employees say, was a place where erstwhile shoe salesmen, ex-strippers and even a former porn actress could sign on as sales reps and make big money pushing home loans. WMC’s top salespeople earned a million dollars a year or more and lived fast, swigging $1,000 bottles of Cristal and wheeling around in $100,000 Ferraris and Bentleys.
Another home run from Michael Hudson this time deep inside several lenders
iWATCH-
Darcy Parmer ran into trouble soon after she started her job as a fraud analyst at Wells Fargo Bank. Her bosses, she later claimed, were upset that she was, well, finding fraud.
Company officials, she alleged in a lawsuit, berated her for reporting that sales staffers were pushing through mortgage deals based on made-up borrower incomes and other distortions, telling her that she didn’t “see the big picture” and that “it is not your job to fix Wells Fargo.” Management, she claimed, ordered her to stop contacting the company’s ethics hotline.
In the end, she said, Wells Fargo forced her out of her job.
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