BFCSA Blog

Now I'm disgusted.  She is sleeping in a house built with the bones of evicted homeowners.   $9,600,000 per year = $184,615 per week 52 weeks a year, $36,923 per day 5 days a week, $971 per hour 38 hours a week.  If only I had gotten into banking as a school leaver!  But then, I wanted to do something HONOURABLE with my life... Full story "SHAREHOLDERS have backed Westpac boss Gail Kelly's $9.6 million pay packet, the second largest of any Australian chief executive."   Only one shareholder raised concerns about the bank's executive pay at the Westpac annual general meeting on Thursday, and more than 88 per cent of shareholder votes were in favour of the bank's 2011/12 remuneration policy. Mrs Kelly is the second-highest-paid bank chief executive Australia, behind her rival at ANZ Mike Smith, who earned $9.7 million in the 2011/12 fiscal year. The two bank bosses...

Inquiry into THE POST – GFC BANKING SECTOR Submission 105 I note that many of the submissions already made to the inquiry deal with complaints about the behaviour and conduct of insolvency practitioners, and lawyers involved in enforcement action by secured creditors.  Some history of my involvement in insolvency and commercial litigation I have nearly 20 years experience dealing in the matters relevant to the terms of reference. Agtion became involved in the specialist consultancy discipline of a forensic analyst dealing in principally banking and insolvency matters as a result of it, and its associated companies being forced into so called “voluntary receivership” by a major bank in 1996.  The companies and I commenced litigation after the companies were released from receivership in 1999. The legal battle against the bank continued until it was resolved in 2007. I am experienced in litigation mainly due to my need to appear and represent...

    By Barry Ritholtz, Published: June 24 Ever since the robo-signing scandal erupted in October 2010, large U.S. banks have slowly come to realize that their practices are under ever-increasing scrutiny. A “Duh!” observation for most people, but not, apparently, for bankers. Belatedly, the bankers took a closer look at their internal procedures for handling defaulted mortgages. It did not take long for them to discover that something significant was amiss. By mid-2011, most of the major money center banks had put the brakes on their normal foreclosure machinery: “What was all this sturm und drang over some bums who don’t pay their bills? Perhaps we better look into it.” (The Washington Post/Source: RealtyTrac)   Their internal review of how mortgages in default were handled revealed a surprising amount of chicanery. Indeed, most of what was going on had elements of something wrong. The banks might have been better served had they asked...

    Same tune, different words?  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/03/mortgage-fraud-new-york-ag-schneiderman-sues-banks-electronic_n_1252793.html     Three big banks were hit on Friday with yet another lawsuit related to wrongful foreclosures. Democratic New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed suit against Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo for deceptive and fraudulent use of a private database used to register mortgages, according to a Friday press release from his office. Schneiderman has been outspoken in urging the Obama administration to hold the nation's largest financial institutions accountable for their role in the foreclosure crisis, notably hesitating to join a larger nationwide case against the country's five largest banks for mortgage fraud. States now have until Monday, according to the Iowa attorney general's office, to decide to join that deal.The New York attorney general has yet to announce whether New York will participate in the deal because of concerns that joining the settlement would make it impossible...