risk-management

It's Time to Focus on Ethical Blind Spots

08/23/12

Ethics plays a significant role in a company's overall value and performance. CEOs and CFOs should be working to protect their businesses - and themselves - from violations.

[more]

How Eminent Domain Mortgage Plans Signal a Failure in Housing Policy

08/17/12

Eminent domain is a well-meaning bid to help individual homeowners, but it also would raise borrower credit costs and undermine efforts to inject private capital back into mortgage markets.

[more]

What Makes a Good Risk Manager?

07/30/12

A majority of BankThink posts dedicated to risk assessment focus on tools, systems, agencies or legislation. Rarely do we talk about the people hired to implement them. Do you believe in risk managers?

[more]

Auditors Are Asleep at the Switch on Banks' Risk Controls

07/16/12

Big banks' boards keep missing increased risk and poor internal controls. Their auditors, supposedly shareholders' first line of defense against poor financial disclosure, material misstatements and fraud, have been silent.

[more]

Volcker vs. Dimon: Who Do You Trust on Systemic Risk?

07/06/12

Even if we could trust megabanks to behave, there may be too much at stake to let systemically risky institutions live by self-imposed principles rather than hard and fast rules.

[more]

Ratings Cuts Are Latest Symptom of a Bigger Problem

06/22/12

Major banks used to thrive by arbitraging reality. As Moody's downgrades show, those opportunities are continuing to diminish.

[more]

Neither Dimon Nor Senators Understand Banking 101

06/19/12

During last week's Senate Banking Committee hearing with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, frequent reference was made to "risk," a word which was, and should still be, anathema in banking, for bankers do not take risks; they only underwrite risks.

[more]

Banks Need Better Risk Management, Not More Regulation

06/14/12

The Dimon Senate hearing was a missed opportunity to spotlight the criticality of risk management practices. When banks get into trouble, you can follow the trail back to a lack of governance, process and controls.

[more]

First Lesson from JPM Debacle: Keep Board Focus Tight

05/21/12

The JPM unpleasantness reinforces the hard lessons of the financial crisis, which are that a sound financial system depends on targeted regulation, "fortress" balance sheets and rigorous governance.

[more]

The JPMorgan Whale's Disastrous Trades Were No Hedges

05/17/12

If the credit derivative positions are hedges, why doesn't JPMorgan account for them as such under GAAP?

[more]