Business

Bank CEOs: Sorry For Risky Behaviour, Bad Decisions

Published

12 years ago

January 15, 2010

Wall Street executives said Wednesday they underestimated the severity of the 2008 financial crisis and apologised for risky behaviour and poor decisions. They also defended their bonus and compensation practices to a skeptical commission investigating what caused the collapse.

Americans are furious and “have a right to be” about the hefty bonuses banks paid out after getting billions of dollars in federal help, the commission’s chairman told chief executives of four major banks, all survivors of the deepest and longest recession since the Depression.

As the hearings opened before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, chairman Phil Angelides pledged “a full and fair inquiry into what brought our financial system to its knees.”

The panel began its yearlong inquiry amid rising public fury over bailouts and bankers’ pay.

“We understand the anger felt by many citizens,” said Brian Moynihan, chief executive and president of Bank of America. “We are grateful for the taxpayer assistance we have received.”

“Over the course of the crisis, we as an industry caused a lot of damage,” Moynihan said.

With Bank of America having repaid its bailout money, he said “the vast majority of our employees played no role in the economic crisis” and do not deserve to be penalised with lower compensation. Moynihan said compensation levels will be higher next year than they were in 2008 but not at levels reached before the financial meltdown.

Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co., said most of his employees took “significant cuts in compensation” in 2008. He said his company would continue to pay people in a “responsible and disciplined manner” to attract and retain top talent.

Still, Dimon said, “We did make mistakes and there were things we could have done better.”

John Mack, chairman of Morgan Stanley, said the crisis was “a powerful wake-up call for this firm.” He said he didn’t take a bonus in 2009 and that his bank has overhauled its compensation practices to discourage “excessive risk-taking.”

The other executives also said their companies had tightened bonus policies, including provisions to “claw back” some of the money when performance faltered.

Angelides, a former Democratic state treasurer of California, questioned Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein about packaging soured assets into bond-like securities and selling them to investors, even as Goldman Sachs was “shorting” the same securities, or making inside bets they would fail. These included risky mortgages that were extended to borrowers with poor credit records and helped cause the home-loan bust.

“It sounds like selling a car with faulty brakes and then buying an insurance policy” on the driver, Angelides said in an animated exchange with the Goldman Sachs executive.

Responded Blankfein: “I do think the behavior is improper. We regret the consequence that people have lost money in it.”

Like the other witnesses, Blankfein acknowledged lapses in judgment in some practices leading up to the crisis.

“Whatever we did, it didn’t work out well,” he said. “We were going to bed every night with more risk than any responsible manager would want to have.”

The four bankers represent institutions that collectively received more than $90 billion in direct government assistance from the $700 billion federal bank bailout and availed themselves of billions from the Federal Reserve. Goldman Sachs received an additional $12.9 billion in bailout money that had gone to AIG.

Angelides suggested that blame for the crisis was widespread among the nation’s largest financial institutions. “Maybe this is like `Murder on the Orient Express’ — Everybody did it,” he said, referring to the Agatha Christie murder mystery. The four bankers appeared before the panel for just over three hours before it turned to other witnesses.

At the White House, presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs said that President Obama on Thursday will outline his plan to make sure taxpayers are able to recoup the money they are owed in the bailouts. The president is expected to announce a new fee on the country’s biggest financial firms to recover up to $120 billion.

Of the bankers’ testimony, Gibbs said, “It would seem to me that apology would be the least of what anybody could expect.” He said Wall Street officials need to show common sense.

The witnesses said they supported tighter oversight, but warned against going too far. Congress is considering limiting the size of financial companies or breaking up companies whose failure could collapse the whole financial system.

“The solution is not to cap the size of financial firms. … We need a regulatory system that provides for even the biggest banks to be allowed to fail, but in a way that does not put taxpayers or the broader economy at risk,” Dimon said.

The commission’s vice chairman, former Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., said the inquiry would try “to get to the bottom of what happened and explain it in a way that the American people can understand.”

Thomas, a former chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said one important question is, “If you knew then what you do now, what would you have done differently?”

Dimon said a crucial blunder was “how we just missed that housing prices don’t go up forever.” Added Mack: “We did eat our cooking and we choked on it.”

The bipartisan, 10-member commission was handed the job of writing the official narrative of what went wrong before the financial system nearly collapsed in the fall of 2008.

The commission is modeled on the panel that examined the causes of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But the prototype could be the Pecora Commission, the Senate committee that investigated Wall Street abuses in 1933-34. It was named after Ferdinand Pecora, the committee’s chief lawyer.

Congress has instructed the current commission to explore 22 issues, from the effect of monetary policy on terms of credit to bank compensation structures.

Business

CBN Opens N500 Grants Portal For Graduates, Undergraduates

Published

1 day ago

January 21, 2022

The Tide

To reduce the level of suffering associated with unemployment in the country, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has developed grants of N500,000.00 for graduates and students.
A statement from the apex bank, made available to The Tide, said qualified persons have been directed to visit cbnties.com.ng portal for the CBN N500k grants registration.
This, according to the statement, is under the Tertiary Institution Entrepreneurship Scheme (TIES), in partnership with Nigerian Polytechnics and Universities to exploit the potential of graduate entrepreneurs in Nigeria.
CBN said the aim of TIES is to increase access to finance for Nigerian polytechnic and university graduates and graduates with innovative business and technological ideas.
The apex bank added that it is also to address the trend of white-collar job seekers and focus on job creation.
The statement quoted the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, as saying that the scheme is designed to create a “paradigm shift from a ‘white-collar’ job search culture to an entrepreneurial culture to economic growth and job creation between undergraduates and graduates.
“As for the grant, CBN will allocate N500 million among the top five third best delivery organizations.
“The top five polytechnics and universities in Nigeria with the best entrepreneurial trends/ideas will be awarded first place: N150 million second place N120 million third place N80 million fourth place N80 million and fifth place. Location – N50 m illion”, it stated.
As part of the scheme, the CBN has announced that it will form a private and public sector expert organization (BoE) for two-year regional and national entrepreneurship competitions to assess the entrepreneurial and technological innovations offered by Nigerian polytechnics and universities.
BoE will also recommend high-potential projects and the variable impact on the award of the grant.
Projects funded under the scheme will be monitored by independent monitors set up jointly by CBN and MFIs.

Business

Economic Growth, Determining Factor For Policies In 2023 – Stockbrokers

Published

1 day ago

January 21, 2022

The Tide

Chairman of Research and Technology at the Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers (CIS), Mr. Akeem Oyewale, has said that economic growth and development should be the determining factor in policies ahead of 2023.
Oyewale, who said this recently at the institute’s Annual National Economic Review and Outlook 2022 webinar in Lagos, urged policy makers to act in a spirit of justice and tolerance to avoid acts that could lead to violence in the run-up to the 2023.
Speaking on the topic: “Global Dynamics Shaping Nigeria‘s Economic Future”, Oyewale listed factors such as the process leading up to the 2023 general elections, the response to Omicron, and the effects of COVID-19, as what would also determine the growth of the nation’s economic development.
He used the fora to urge the Federal Government to intensify its engagement with Nigeria’s capital market to better smoothly finance the 2022 budget deficit without increasing borrowing.
Oyewale also directed the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to fully consider the effects on the capital market when making monetary and fiscal policies.
According to him, the philosophy of building an economy led by the private sector enshrined in the National Development Plan must be strictly adhered to.
On the need for new listings, Oyewale said Nigeria National Petroleum Company’s trading should continue with the public listing of its shares on the stock market.
This, he explained, would give Nigerians the opportunity to co-own one of the country’s commanding heights.
“The CBN and banks should grant trading facilities to securities trading firms in the country to maintain optimism in the capital market”, he said.
Speaking further, he urged pension funds and other institutional investors to increase their investment in the stock market to create much-needed stability and encourage new investment.
Earlier, President of the CIS Council, Mr Olatunde Amolegbe, said the institute would continue with initiatives that would enhance its growth and development in 2022.
Amolegbe stated that CIS would undertake activities that would promote capital market literacy in all geopolitical zones of the country, saying that he would strengthen collaboration with international professional bodies such as CISI UK and others for the benefit of their members.
He continued that the institute was working to increase the number of Nigerian universities offering graduate and undergraduate courses in securities and investment/capital market studies.
“Our vision by 2023 is to see the Securities and Investments profession registered in the hearts of young Nigerian academics as their preferred career path and CIS as the model to be followed by other professional bodies,” he concluded.

Business

PenCom Completes Review Of Pension Reform Act 2014

Published

1 day ago

January 21, 2022

The Tide

The regulatory body of the Nigerian Pension Industry, the National Pension Commission (PenCom) says it has deliberated on the review of the Pension Reform Act 2014 (PRA 2014).
This was contained in a statement to newsmen signed by Peter Aghahowa, Head, Corporate Communications of PenCom, who disclosed that the regulator organised the retreat on the review of PRA 2014 in Abuja between January 12 and 14.
According to Aghahowa, the retreat was aimed at identifying salient issues to be reviewed in the PRA 2014 as a prelude to advancing legislative action on the bill.
Aghahowa said it is expected that the National Assembly would subsequently organise a public hearing to provide an avenue for stakeholders to formally make input into the proposed amendments.
He also said that the PRA 2014 was enacted following a review of the initial PRA of 2004, which introduced legal and institutional frameworks of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) and established PenCom to regulate and supervise all pension matters in Nigeria.
According to him, the Director-General of PenCom, Aisha Dahir-Umar, during the opening ceremony of the retreat, had informed the participants that the PRA 2014 codified one of the most important socio-economic reform initiatives of the Federal Government.
He continued that she said this has brought about a pension industry that has accumulated pension assets in excess of N13 trillion invested in various aspects of the Nigerian economy.
He quoted her as saying that “the review is a corollary to some implementation challenges encountered with certain sections of the Act not long after its enactment in July 2014.
“This was also an addition to persistent calls from stakeholders for the amendment of some sections of the Act, which resulted in several legislative initiatives through the sponsorship of Bills for amendment of the PRA 2014 by the National Assembly.
“Consequently, the Commission as the regulator of the pension industry, decided to coordinate and harmonize the various efforts in order to achieve a comprehensive and constructive exercise for the review of PRA 2014”, he concluded.