Fool Me Once, Shame on Me, Fool me Twice, Thrice -- You're Doomed: The Sad Saga of Satyam Computers (SAY)What began as a corporate governance issue back in December has now turned into a major financial scandal for the ages in India. The shares of Satyam Computer Services (SAY) has plummeted more than 90% in trading here at the NYSE today, a stark reminder that investors must always cover their backs or else get racked by the likes of Enron, Bernie Madoff or Ramalingam Raju.Early today, Ramalingam Raju, the chairman of troubled Indian IT outsourcing company Satyam Computers (on which we had a Hold rating), sent a startling letter to his board and the Securities & Exchange Board of India. Raju acknowledged his culpability in hiding news that he had inflated the amount of cash on the balance sheet of India's fourth-largest IT company ...

Shareholders Association Chairman Bruce Sheppard has lashed out at the wrong target as far as the Hanover Finance debacle is concerned.

In today’s Dominion Post he called Hanover Finance investors “dumb wits”, “idiots” and “stupid lunatics” for supporting the debt restructuring proposal.

Sheppard should have directed his outburst against independent Chairman Greg Muir, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Securities Commission and the company’s auditors. Maybe he is peeved because Hanover’s investors voted against him asking more than one question at Tuesday’s meeting.

Investors voted in support of the debt restructuring because it was recommended by Muir and PricewaterhouseCoopers. It was also effectively endorsed by KordaMentha and the trustee, Guardian Trust.

Investors usually comply with the recommendations of independent directors and their advisors while Hanover Finance investors were also attracted by the proposed repayment schedule shown below. No repayment programme was offered under the receivership alternative.

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This would actually be really, really funny if it weren't so tragically true, sad, and thoroughly outlandish. From the Moscow Times: Blaming the turmoil, Standard and Poor's took the unprecedented step Thursday of disclosing only the top 10 names on its annual transparency and disclosure list of Russia's 90 largest publicly traded companies. Investors and company representatives waiting for the information at a news conference called by the international ratings agency were stunned by the decision. "It is complete absurdity that transparency ratings are being kept secret. What are transparency ratings when they aren't transparent?" said Alexei Navalny, an individual Russian stockholder currently involved in several transparency-related lawsuits against Rosneft, which was ranked as the second most transparent company on the list after CTC Media. This practically reminds me of the time back when PricewaterhouseCoopers withdrew years of its audits of Yukos to help the state's prosecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky after ...

Frozen Margin CallsMargins Calls on Frozen AssetsThe motivation to multi-prime increased more this week as hedge fund managers learn they may have to meet margin calls on securities which are frozen within Lehman Brothers. Here is a short excerpt from a news piece on this topic:_____________________________________________Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s hedge-fund clients may have to pay more collateral on $65 billion of assets frozen when the investment bank went bankrupt a month ago.Lehman's London-based prime brokerage has about 3,500 active clients including hedge funds that own about $45 billion in securities, Steven Pearson, the partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers responsible for unraveling Lehman's U.K. operations, said in an interview. They hold an additional $20 billion in short positions, or bets that prices will fall.While investors are largely unable to access their ...

By relaxing the US financial system’s mark-to-market accounting standards, the government is effectively deactivating the financial “early warning system” that let investors know that a global credit crisis was brewing, says Jennifer Yousfi in Money Morning.

By relaxing the U.S. financial system’s mark-to-market accounting standards, the U.S. government is effectively deactivating the financial “early warning system” that let investors know that a global credit crisis was brewing – and kept it from turning into a total global meltdown, professional investors warn. As part of the just-passed U.S. bailout bill, the government has reiterated the Securities and Exchange Commission’s authority to relax the mark-to-market standards. If the SEC actually follows through on that directive, many professional investors worry that we won’t catch on to the next leg of the ongoing credit crisis until it’s way too late. While politicians point to mark-to-market rules as the cause of the billions in write-downs and losses suffered by financial firms in recent quarters, in fact, it was mark-to-market accounting that first exposed the underlying problems in the complex markets for ...

Germany Hedge FundsGermany Hedge Fund GuideHere is a short collection of articles on the hedge fund industry in Germany. I am always looking for more valuable online tools and resources to add to these geographical hedge fund guides to the hedge fund industry. If you have a white paper or PowerPoint that I can include here please send me an email and I will post it for everyone's benefit.German Hedge Fund Resources:Germany to Step Up Hedge Fund Scrutiny. As a plan for German governemnt to place a greater scrutiny on country's hedge fund investment, Barbara Hendricks, the deputy finance minister, said that Germany would force the funds to declare stakes in companies when they rise to three ...