In this essay, I will discuss the circumstances that resulted in the merger, assess the significant positive (or negative) effects of the merger, and examine the organizational structure that has resulted from the merger. American Airlines filed for bankruptcy in November 2011. According to an interview with Richard Quest of CNN, Thomas Horton the new CEO of American Airlines stated that the company was forced into bankruptcy because of the cost disadvantages it faced compared to it’s competitors that had already gone through a bankruptcy. The news came as a shock to many. The company had enough money to sustain the losses that it may incur through
6, 2008. In an already tumultuous market the preferred stock of the two firms tumbled to below a dollar. September 2008 was the month that saw the fall of many financial institutions. Banks termed too big to fail. Lehman Brothers file bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch was bought out by Bank of America, and AIG, an insurance company that sold insurance to investment banks to cover the downturn of investments, was on the brink of financial distress along with so many other failing financial institutions.
Known also as Black Tuesday, October 29th left stockholders shattered with recorded losses reaching $40 billion dollars (Kelly, n.d.). Many banks and financial institutions began collapsing which led to irretrievable, uninsured deposits and savings. Fearing further loss, people began spending less which led to a decrease in production and an increase in unemployment. As companies began to fail, the government devised the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in order to protect American businesses. The Tariff placed high taxes on imports leading to a decline in international trade.
We have downfall and then we pick things back up and everything gets better. But , just when things get better, it happens to get worse again. Many believe erroneously that the stock market crash that occurred on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929 is one and the same with the Great Depression. In fact, it was one of the major causes that led to the Great Depression. Two months after the original crash in October, stockholders had lost more than $40 billion dollars.
This act was signed by President Bush after the financial scandals revolving around Enron, Worldcom, amongst others. People want to know, why was there not one single arrest of a high ranked executive following the biggest market crash in history. Sarbanes Oxley was supposed to help prevent this kind of disastrous situation. During the crash, executives from Countrywide mortgage amongst other bankers packaged toxic securities and sold them to their customers knowing that they were practically worthless. These subprime mortgage derivatives were the entire center of the meltdown that resulted in millions of jobs being lost, and millions of lives ruined.
(AP) Former Rite Aid Corp. chief executive Martin L. Grass was sentenced to eight years in prison Thursday for conspiring to falsely inflate the value of the company his father founded and cover up the scheme. Grass, 50, who headed up the nation's third-largest pharmacy chain in the late 1990s before being forced out in October 1999, also was fined $500,000 and given three years' probation for his role in a billion-dollar accounting fraud that sent the company's stock tumbling. Before U.S. District Judge Sylvia H. Rambo handed down the sentence, Grass apologized to Rite Aid, its stockholders and employees. "For the harm caused to them, I am truly sorry," he said. Grass was indicted by a federal grand jury two years ago.
Case 37: American International Group (AIG) and the Bonus Fiasco Synopsis: In September 2008 American International Group started to fall under the financial crisis in America. The United states enter in a recession in the beginning of 2008 but it didn’t hit until the end of that year. Then all big companies started falling and going bankrupt. They decide to help stop the collapse of the America economy by presenting a bailout package of companies in need. The government created a 750 billion bailout package for American companies that are going under.
These scandals cost investors billions of dollars when the share prices of affected companies collapsed, and shook the publics’ faith in the security markets. When examining the SOX act you can see that since 2002 many things have changed in the past eight years. Corporate governance is one of many things that have changed; Public companies must now have a totally separate audit committee composed of entirely independent directors and must contain one financial expert. Security fraud now has much more extreme punishments for those who commit or conspire to commit fraud. Since the introduction of SOX auditors of public companies must keep documentation of an audit for seven years, destruction of any documentation or evidence that someone has committed fraud is now punishable by jail time and fine.
During an investigation there were many questionable accounting transactions that were brought up, such as large executive bonuses as well as many loans for large amounts of money that were later forgiven without repayment. Kozlowski and Swartz were sentenced to 8 – 25 years in prison ("Investopedia", 2014). Then a lawsuit against Tyco cost the company $2.92 billion in repayment to its investors ("Investopedia", 2014). The biggest issue here was allowing for a CEO and CFO to have too much access to funds. A protocol should be in place that when a sale of stocks is made and no one authorized it then a full audit should take place from a third party or if a loan is going to be made then more then just the CEO and CFO’s approval needs to be given.
And before you go broke and don’t know what to do with your life. After the stock market broke down on August 7th there were 4.5 million people that were unemployment and didn’t know where to go to work and what they were going to do later in life. President Herbert Hoover appoints a Committee for the unemployment relief. And they were too late to take out all of their money and put it back into the bank. Franklin D. Roosevelt handles the great depression very well, because he went to the court of additional Justices, and created a new deal program.