We don’t know a damn thing about gemstones but we’ll go out on a limb to say that 10,700 carats is a lot. That’s the size of a “ruby” that E&Y has the esteemed pleasure of trying to sell, as the administrators of now bankrupt Wrekin Construction in the UK.
The stone was once valued around £11 million but turns out its worth closer to £100.
E&Y is now resorting to hocking this overpriced paperweight, that will certainly be re-gifted many times over, in Rock ‘n’ Gem Magazine in the UK and Colored Stone Magazine here in the Land of the Free.
Rare £11m gem becomes £100 rock [BBC]
Failed group’s £11m ruby ‘near worthless’ [The Daily Telegraph]
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LandAmerica: Victims of Bad Marketing or Ponzi Schemers?
Editor’s note: Adrienne Gonzalez is founder and managing editor of Jr Deputy Accountant as well as regular contributor to leading financial/investment sites like Seeking Alpha and GoldmanSachs666. By day, she teaches unlicensed accountants to pass the CPA exam, though what she does in her copious amounts of freetime in the evening is really none of your business. Follow her adve and CPA-wrangling on Twitter @adrigonzo but please don’t show up unannounced at her San Francisco office as she’s got a mean streak. Her favorite FASB is 166.
There’s nothing we appreciate more than a really juicy tale of crappy auction rate securities, fire sales ignored by regulators, and bankruptcy when the scam runs out, especially when the perps happen to be audited by a Big 4 firm you may have heard of (there are only 4, just throw a dart).
Excuse our bad grammar and run-on sentences, we just don’t know where to start with this.
More, after the jump
Once upon a time not that long ago when a tarp was just something you brought camping, LandAmerica was at the top of the 1031 exchange game. That entire story is a tad too long for today’s 140 character attention span so let’s fast-forward to the part where there are even entire forums dedicated to discussing why regulators missed LandAmerica. In short: LandAmerica exchangers are pissed off.
To get a hint at just how pissed off, take a peek at what the forum has to say:
Then LandAm files Bankruptcy proceedings on their 1031 subsidiary, saying: “…you 1031 clients of ours are ‘…going under the wheels of the Bankruptcy bus” because “we” made bad decisions in $290 million ARSs. Wow! a $300 million “wash.” A “Back-Door” merger without the “toxic” ARS funds. LandAm1031 clients get hosed!
Burn! Those are some wild accusations, is it fair to spit such venom at LandAmerica?
Well… um… yeah, actually. And LandAmerica has due diligence to blame Fidelity has due diligence to thank.
On November 24th, 2008 LandAmerica went into free-fall after Fidelity announced that it would be pulling out of the tentative deal (subject to final due diligence). Given the BBB mark of the beast by Fitch shortly thereafter, LandAmerica slumped off to bankruptcy court. Meanwhile, those who found themselves at the short end of LandAm’s 1031 exchange stick started getting letters from the IRS while their money was off in SunTrust accounts getting killed by illiquid auction rate securities without their knowledge. You’d think more people would be discussing something that involves millions of misappropriated investor dollars but who are we to judge?
As with most (alleged) Ponzi schemes, the “scheme” escapes detection until the money runs out. And when Fidelity backed out of the LandAmerica deal, LandAmerica had what can only be called a Madoff Moment.
Making this saga even better is, that for some completely bizarre reason that escapes us, the Richmond Fed has decided to hire LandAmerica’s former legal counsel Michelle Gluck to serve on their team as Chief Legal Officer (perhaps they are taking a cue from the Fed Board of Governors who hired an ex-Enron PR girl awhile back?). We truly love hate to wildly speculate here but this goes against logic, which we are generally used to seeing from Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker and his bank. “With her broad range of leadership experience and extensive legal expertise, I know she’ll make great contributions to the Bank and to the Federal Reserve System,” he said of his new hire.
So what exactly is Richmond trying to do here? With credentials like that, I’m only slightly concerned now.
We’ll let you know if we ever figure that out. The SEC couldn’t be bothered to comment about it and reminded me why I don’t like picking up the phone.
We did however speak with one angry LandAmerica creditor who has a lot of questions and no answers and we’d be happy to update you with his comments as the investigation unravels. Oh wait, who said there was an investigation? Could someone kindly forward this to the SEC? Some of us have a day job.
Reminder: Daylight Savings Time is an Excellent Opportunity to Rip Off Clients
If you are one of those strange people who still has to set your clocks […]
We’re Probably Going to Have to Accept the Fact That Accounting Rules are No Match for the Bank Lobby
We’ve been over this 1000 times but like a bad rash, the issue keeps coming back.
NYT has already accused politicians of meddling in the esoterica of accounting, though personally I think that accusation might have been expressed just a tad too late.
As I mentioned when the July article came out:
More, after the jump
Ex FASB chair and former KPMG partner Edward Trott got it right saying “The area for bank regulators to be involved with accounting standards setting is to help identify the financial information the banks need from others to make appropriate lending and investing decisions. In my experience, banks want current fair value information about assets that serve as collateral for loans. They do not want information about what assets cost two or three years ago.”
Exactly! So what’s the debate about?
Assets are not being valued rationally. If someone can explain the model to me, I would love to hear it.
Or as we now call it, “fuzzy math.”
I’ve never been a huge fan of math, probably a large part of why I ended up on the fringes of the accounting industry, we hardly use it. It’s the rules that are being perverted, not necessarily the numbers. That’s Trott’s point, and he’s not the only one who feels that way.
The problem is that companies (non-financials) need to navigate these waters that have been artificially stirred up to allow banks to appear healthier than they are. Companies are licking their wounds and selling off assets while banks are preening over their profitable quarters? That doesn’t make sense.
Accounting pressure is not new either:
What’s gone unnoticed is that in the late ’90s Summers did nothing to stop former Fed chair Alan Greenspan from pressuring US accounting rule makers to water down a proposed new derivatives accounting rule that may have helped stop the current crisis. Many business leaders had strongly opposed the new rule…In fact, in 1998, Summers testified in Congress against regulating the derivatives market.
The ongoing debate gets stranger. What is there to debate about? The pressure is there, minus the understanding of what occurs as a consequence of these actions. Somehow, the behavior continues and we’re still arguing over it.