[IP] If Refco Isn't Scary, What Is? summerized
SECURITIES regulators and pundits say that there will be no financial
market tremors emanating from Refco Inc., the enormous commodities
and financial services firm that, after more than 30 years in
business, hit the skids last week.
...Bennett, hiding a personal loan from Refco worth almost half a
billion dollars from his shareholders, as described by prosecutors in
their suit charging him with securities fraud. Then there is the
inability of Refco's auditors or investment banks to notice the
repeated shuffling of this loan on and off the company's balance sheet.
...But scariest of all may be the fact that supposedly savvy
institutional investors who are fiduciaries - TIAA-CREF and
Oppenheimer Funds, for example - bought Refco's shares in spite of
the hair-raising risk factors detailed in the prospectus.
...This is the way investors live now: a financial services company's
inability to prepare its own financial statements does not preclude
financial institutions from buying its stock.
...Refco told prospective investors that it was under investigation
by both the United States attorney in New York and the Securities and
Exchange Commission.
...At the time of the offering, the prospectus said, Mr. Maggio was
near a resolution of the matter and was ready to accept an order from
the commission suspending him from any supervisory duties at the firm
for one year. Nevertheless, "while complying with the restrictions
of such supervisory suspension, Mr. Maggio would continue to work for
us and Refco Securities in his current capacities," the prospectus said.
...Such nightmare risk factors as those enumerated by Refco might not
have been a deal breaker for potential investors if they liked what
they saw on its financial statements.
...Neither did Refco's buyers seem to question why the company's
chief financial officer, Robert Trosten, left the firm last October,
just a few months before his company was to go public.
...We are, after all in the anything-goes era where shareholders
condone excessive executive compensation, accept massive dilution of
their holdings from stock option grants and cheerfully buy into the
corporate spin that masks operational realities.
http://select.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/business/16gret.html
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