EthicsBite™

A bank, an IPO and an Oil & Gas Driller all potentially have that one key characteristic of the astronomical black hole – a massive implosion sucking everything close enough to them into the abyss.

First the bank — JPMorgan Chase

This week’s news included the analysis that the hedging unit which lost $ 2 BILLION-with-a-B dollars of asset value faces a loss that is growing and likely to continue to grow. Most recent estimates are around $5 BILLION. Recall that when this story first broke, there was a total bet… uh, I mean trade, on the table of around $100 Billion in the “risky” category. Now that the whole world knows the situation, you can bet…. uh, I mean trade, on the prospect that there will be no takers on the other side should the bank try to unwind its position. Do you see the black hole now?  So if a 2 to 5 percent loss in this position wipes out about $20 Billion of shareholder value in JPMorgan Chase then what would a 50% loss do? Poof. No more bank. And who could possibly come to the rescue in order to prevent the next world wide financial meltdown? Hmmm.

And by the way, remember how banks can regulate themselves? It turns out that the 3 JPMorgan Chase directors who had responsibility for risk evaluation and the oversight thereof don’t really have the experience to do that. One is the head of a museum.

Ethical Analysis: As commented on in earlier posts, fiduciary responsibility to one’s shareholders – F; professional codes of ethics for financial advisors – F; adherence to the ethical expectations of the investing public and general citizenry – F.

Next the IPO – Facebook, Morgan Stanley, the NASDAQ

Before its IPO, Facebook was heralded as the largest IPO ever. Now it may be a major IPO bust, with stock hitting its peak on the day of the IPO and down since. The NASDAQ apparently could not keep track of all the individual investor trades, with news in the past two days that some of those investors had money removed from their account to support the purchase but found no shares of FB appearing in their account to reflect that purchase. Morgan Stanley is planning to dole out millions of its underwriting fees to those investors. How long do you think it will be before Morgan sues the exchange? In the meantime, Facebook is considering a move off the NASDAQ to a competing exchange and everyone seems to be questioning the company’s valuation. Then there is the allegation that the underwriters went forward with the IPO even though new financial data was bringing the IPO price into question. Not to mention that only some (I believe they were at first called “preferred”) potential investors were informed of this news. How do you spell SEC?

Morgan Stanley and the NASDAQ have big black eyes over this one, but with a likely SEC investigation, shareholder lawsuits already launched and the prospect of continued sell-off in the shares, this mess can only get bigger, nastier and more expensive.

Ethical Analysis: My jury is still out on Facebook, although their leadership clearly consented to go forward with the IPO in spite of changing financial data. NASDAQ appears thus far to be an operational blunder. Morgan Stanley and the underwriting team may have broken securities laws, certainly didn’t maintain a level playing field for the retail investors and should have delayed the IPO for few days. I would give them an F in meeting the ethical expectations of investors and in conducting a professional financial underwriting operation.

Finally the Oil and Gas Driller – Chesapeake Energy

The major news this week was that Carl Icahn is/has accumulated over 4% of the shares of Chesapeake. Also, two of the nine board members are up for re-election at the annual shareholders meeting in early June.

So why do I consider this one a potential black hole?

Where is the money? All that money that founder and CEO Aubrey McClendon borrowed from various entities using his personal interest in company wells totals to somewhere well north of $ 1 Billion-with-a-B dollars. At one point (2008) he even got the company to buy his map collection for $12 million in addition to paying him an annual bonus of $75 million. Where is all this cash going? The guy seems to have an amazing appetite for cash. That tells me that something is going on behind the curtain. His investment (and the company’s too, of course) in the Oklahoma City Thunder pro basketball team isn’t nearly enough to account for all these loans.Maybe it’s his hedge fund that he’s been running out of his CEO offices at Chesapeake. Maybe he has personal margin calls on his stock in the company. I don’t know and nothing has been coming out in the press.  What I do know is that there is another big piece of this story that is yet to come out and that Chesapeake’s investments and Mr. McClendon’s appear very much intertwined.

The potential black hole has similarities with the one that took down Skilling, Fastow and all of the Enron shareholders and employees. It is related to the value of the company’s shares which have fallen with the abundance of natural gas. In Enron’s case, there were off balance sheet liabilities that were tied up in deals with Fastow’s friends. Those deals started to unravel when the stock dropped below a certain value. I’m not saying that’s the mechanism involved here, but I am saying that McClendon’s personal need for cash accelerated as Chesapeake’s share value went down, a sign that he is over leveraged somewhere in his financial picture. The company may be as well, since almost everything that the CEO is involved in personally has company involvement as well. That may be why McClendon, who has known Icahn for many years, is now eager to have a financial white knight come to the table.  Stay tuned.

Ethical Assessment: Conflicts of Interest abound like a mound of fire ants. F-.

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