October 5th, 2009

The Week That Was (October 4th 2009)

As part of our effort to make the InvesGuard blog more effective and impactful, each week we will try to summarize and present the past week’s most exciting news.

 

The big shocker for last week of course, was the big question mark that remained after Kenneth Lewis’ sudden (but not unexpected) resignation announcement. In yet another Board failure, (we’ve blogged about their other failures here) Bank of America’s Board failed to create a back up plan to the most important corporate position.

 

Our list of other notable events from last week also includes:

 

Xerox which started the week by reporting their impending buyout of ACS. The deal valued at $4 billion will open new doors for Xerox in terms of Business Off shoring Services catapulting it in the leagues of IBM, Accenture and others.

 

The House Oversight Committee held a hearing on Wednesday September 30th to gauge the role credit rating agencies played in the financial crisis. At the end of the hearing, what stood out the most was the presence of a possible conflict of interest within Moody’s compliance function. The biggest shocker yet was the fact that the outside counsel appointed by Moody’s to hold an inquiry into Mr. Kolchinsky’s claims of wrongdoings by Moody, did not submit a written report adding to the vagueness of the entire investigation. InvesGuard live blogged extensively for this event. You can see our observations here.

 

Interestingly, the chairman of this House Oversight Committee, Chairman Edolphus Towns is also the recipient of one of the ‘VIP’ loans from Bank of America (through Countrywide).It is alleged that the program offered loans to politically influential figures and other favored borrowers at more attractive terms than were available to the general public.

 

Tropical Storm Parma hit the coast of Philippinesimmediately after Storm Ketsana hit the area a week earlier.

 

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