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Tobashi Scheme
A tobashi scheme is a financial fraud through creative accounting where a client's losses are hidden by an investment firm by shifting them between the portfolios of other (genuine or fake) clients. Any real client with portfolio losses can therefore have its accounts flattered by this process. This cycling cannot continue indefinitely, so the investment firm itself ends up picking up the cost. As it is ultimately expensive, there must be a strong incentive for the investment firm to pursue this activity on behalf of its clients. Etymology ''Tobashi'' () is Japanese for "flying away". It describes the practice where external investment firms typically sell or otherwise take loss-bearing investments off the books of one client company at their near-cost valuation to conceal investment losses from the clients' financial statements. In that sense, the losses are made to disappear, or 'fly away'. Structure The scheme often makes use of off-balance sheet financing or special pu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Financial Fraud
In law, fraud is intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compensation) or criminal law (e.g., a fraud perpetrator may be prosecuted and imprisoned by governmental authorities), or it may cause no loss of money, property, or legal right but still be an element of another civil or criminal wrong. The purpose of fraud may be monetary gain or other benefits, such as obtaining a passport, travel document, or driver's licence. In cases of mortgage fraud, the perpetrator may attempt to qualify for a mortgage by way of false statements. Terminology Fraud can be defined as either a civil wrong or a criminal act. For civil fraud, a government agency or person or entity harmed by fraud may bring litigation to stop the fraud, seek monetary damages, or both. For criminal fraud, a person may be prose ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yamaichi Securities
was a Japanese securities trading firm. The company announced it would cease operations on November 24, 1997 and was declared bankrupt by the Tokyo District Court on June 2, 1999. History Yamaichi, formed in 1897, was at one time one of the four major Japanese brokerages. Its clients were major Japanese corporations. In the boom of the 1980s it was given specified sums of money by 10 of its clients to invest as it saw fit. A sharp downturn in the early 1990s and poor dealings by Yamaichi generated losses of more than 200 billion yen. Fearing the demise of the firm through loss of reputation that would result if the scale of losses became known, the brokerage shouldered the loss of its clients, and moved it off balance sheet. Yamaichi sold in a private placement Touchwood Pacific Partners limited partnership to about 50 Japanese institutional or private investors in the amount of $191 million in 1990 for The Walt Disney Company film production. ''Tobashi'' and collapse In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Creative Accounting
Creative accounting is a euphemism referring to accounting practices that may follow the letter of the rules of standard accounting practices, but deviate from the spirit of those rules with questionable accounting ethics—specifically distorting results in favor of the "preparers", or the firm that hired the accountant. They are characterized by excessive complication and the use of novel ways of characterizing income, assets, or liabilities, and the intent to influence readers towards the interpretations desired by the authors. The terms "innovative" or "aggressive" are also sometimes used. Another common synonym is "cooking the books". Creative accounting is oftentimes used in tandem with outright financial fraud (including securities fraud), and lines between the two are blurred. Creative accounting practices have been known since ancient times and appear world-wide in various forms. The term as generally understood refers to systematic misrepresentation of the true incom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hollywood Accounting
Hollywood accounting (also known as Hollywood bookkeeping) is the opaque or " creative" set of accounting methods used by the film, video, television and music industry to budget and record profits for creative projects. Expenditures can be inflated to reduce or eliminate the reported profit of the project, thereby reducing the amount which the corporation must pay in taxes and royalties or other profit-sharing agreements, as these are based on net profit. Hollywood accounting gets its name from its prevalence in the entertainment industry—that is, in the movie studios of Hollywood at a time when most studios were located in Hollywood. Those affected can include writers and actors, but also production companies, producers and investors. A number of cases of creative accounting have been successfully pursued in court and have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in awarded damages. Practices Hollywood accounting can take several forms. In one form, a subsidiary is forme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Repurchase Agreement
A repurchase agreement, also known as a repo, RP, or sale and repurchase agreement, is a form of secured short-term borrowing, usually, though not always using government securities as collateral. A contracting party sells a security to a lender and, by agreement between the two parties, repurchases the security back shortly afterwards, at a slightly higher contracted price. The difference in the prices and the time interval between sale and repurchase creates an effective interest rate on the loan. The mirror transaction, a "reverse repurchase agreement," is a form of secured contracted lending in which a party buys a security along with a concurrent commitment to sell the security back in the future at a specified time and price. Because this form of funding is often used by dealers, the convention is to reference the dealer's position in a transaction with an end party. Central banks also use repo and reverse repo transactions to manage banking system reserves. When the Feder ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers Inc. ( ) was an American global financial services firm founded in 1850. Before filing for bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States (behind Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch), with about 25,000 employees worldwide. It was doing business in investment banking, equity, fixed-income and derivatives sales and trading (especially U.S. Treasury securities), research, investment management, private equity, and private banking. Lehman was operational for 158 years from its founding in 1850 until 2008. On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following the exodus of most of its clients, drastic declines in its stock price, and the devaluation of assets by credit rating agencies. The collapse was largely due to Lehman's involvement in the subprime mortgage crisis and its exposure to less liquid assets. Lehman's bankruptcy filing is the largest in US history, having ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Repo 105
Repo 105 is Lehman Brothers' name for an accounting maneuver that it used where a short-term repurchase agreement is classified as a sale. The cash obtained through this "sale" is then used to pay down debt, allowing the company to appear to reduce its leverage by temporarily paying down liabilities—just long enough to reflect on the company's published balance sheet. After the company's financial reports are published, the company borrows cash and repurchases its original assets. Use by Lehman Brothers Repo 105 was used by investment bank Lehman Brothers three times according to a March 2010 report by the bankruptcy court examiner. The report stated that Lehman's auditors, Ernst & Young, were aware of this questionable classification. Law firm Linklaters has received unfavorable press treatment in relation to their issuance of an English law opinion which characterized the arrangements as a ''true sale'' as opposed to a transfer by Lehman with a charge back in favor of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscription model, requiring readers to pay for access to most of its articles and content. The ''Journal'' is published six days a week by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corp. As of 2023, ''The'' ''Wall Street Journal'' is the List of newspapers in the United States, largest newspaper in the United States by print circulation, with 609,650 print subscribers. It has 3.17 million digital subscribers, the second-most in the nation after ''The New York Times''. The newspaper is one of the United States' Newspaper of record, newspapers of record. The first issue of the newspaper was published on July 8, 1889. The Editorial board at The Wall Street Journal, editorial page of the ''Journal'' is typically center-right in its positio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Olympus Corporation
is a Japanese manufacturer of optics and reprography products, headquartered in Hachioji, Tokyo. Olympus was established in 1919, initially specializing in microscopes and thermometers, and later in imaging. Olympus holds roughly a 70 percent share of the global endoscope market, estimated to be worth approximately US$2.5 billion. It was formerly also a maker of cameras, camera lens, camera lenses and dictaphones, until it divested this part to OM Digital Solutions in 2020. In 2011, Olympus scandal, Olympus attracted worldwide media scrutiny when it fired its CEO Michael Christopher Woodford for whistleblowing, and the matter snowball effect, snowballed into a corporate corruption investigation with multiple arrests. In 2016, it paid million (equivalent to $million in ) in fines associated with its illegal, long running, Kickback (bribery), kickback scheme. Products Cameras and audio In 1936, Olympus introduced its first camera, the Semi-Olympus I, fitted with the first Z ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bond (finance)
In finance, a bond is a type of Security (finance), security under which the issuer (debtor) owes the holder (creditor) a debt, and is obliged – depending on the terms – to provide cash flow to the creditor (e.g. repay the principal (i.e. amount borrowed) of the bond at the Maturity (finance), maturity date and interest (called the coupon (bond), coupon) over a specified amount of time.) The timing and the amount of cash flow provided varies, depending on the economic value that is emphasized upon, thus giving rise to different types of bonds. The interest is usually payable at fixed intervals: semiannual, annual, and less often at other periods. Thus, a bond is a form of loan or IOU. Bonds provide the borrower with external funds to finance long-term investments or, in the case of government bonds, to finance current expenditure. Bonds and Share capital, stocks are both Security (finance), securities, but the major difference between the two is that (capital) stockholders h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Government Bonds
A government bond or sovereign bond is a form of bond issued by a government to support public spending. It generally includes a commitment to pay periodic interest, called coupon payments'','' and to repay the face value on the maturity date. For example, a bondholder invests $20,000, called face value or principal, into a 10-year government bond with a 10% annual coupon; the government would pay the bondholder 10% interest ($2000 in this case) each year and repay the $20,000 original face value at the date of maturity (i.e. after 10 years). Government bonds can be denominated in a foreign currency or the government's domestic currency. Countries with less stable economies tend to denominate their bonds in the currency of a country with a more stable economy (i.e. a hard currency). All government bonds carry default risk; that is, the possibility that the government will be unable to pay bondholders. Bonds from countries with less stable economies are usually considered t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Credit Suisse
Credit Suisse Group AG (, ) was a global Investment banking, investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland. According to UBS, eventually Credit Suisse was to be fully integrated into UBS. While the integration was yet to be completed, both banks are operating separately. However, on May 31, 2024, it was announced that Credit Suisse ceased to exist. Headquartered in Zürich, as a standalone firm, it maintained offices in all major financial centres around the world and provided services in investment banking, private banking, asset management, and shared services. It was known for strict Bank secrecy, bank–client confidentiality and Banking in Switzerland, banking secrecy. The Financial Stability Board considered it to be a Systemically important financial institution, global systemically important bank. Credit Suisse was also a primary dealer and Forex counterparty of the Federal Reserve in the United States. Credit Suisse was founded in 185 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
