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June 27, 2009
Some Operations of Citigroup Suspended in Japan
By CHRIS NICHOLSON
PARIS — Japanese regulators ordered Citibank on Friday to suspend all sales operations in its retail banking division for a month starting July 15 because the lender had failed “to make notification of suspicious transactions, including money laundering.”
In a statement, the Financial Services Authority cited “fundamental problems with CJL’s compliance and governance system,” referring to Citibank Japan Ltd. by its initials.
“CJL has not accurately identified a series of problems that were recently found,” the agency added, “and the effectiveness of the internal audit has not been ensured.”
The suspension means that the bank will be prohibited from advertising, soliciting customers, or using publicity in relation to its retail banking products.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/bu...i.html?_r=1&hp
The Pop Star and the Private Equity Firms
June 26, 2009, 9:18 am
Michael Jackson delighted people around the world with his music, inspired countless amateur moonwalkers with his moves and had an untold, but surely huge, effect on the sales of individual white gloves.
The pop superstar, who died unexpectedly on Thursday, also kept a lot of people in high finance very busy. His wealth, and, later in his career, his expanding debt, became fodder for deals with private equity firms such as Fortress Investment Group and Colony Capital as well as big banks such as Citigroup and Bank of America.
In the process, his fantastical Neverland Ranch in California was nearly put on the auction block — saved only when one investment firm swooped in to buy the related debt from another firm, with hopes of backing, and profiting from, a revival of Mr. Jackson’s career.
A lot of Mr. Jackson’s monetary dealings have been conducted in private. But several of the pivotal moments have been described in media reports over the years.
Driving many of the deals was Mr. Jackson’s increasingly unmanageable debt load — something that private equity firms can probably relate to these days.
A 2006 article in The New York Times said the principal drains on Mr. Jackon’s finances may have been “monumentally unwise investments that apparently produced equally colossal losses” — and, later, the payments to service his debt.
A financial adviser to Mr. Jackson described how he might have frittered away $50 million on things like amusement-park ideas and “bizarre, global kinds of computerized Marvel comic-book characters bigger than life.”
In 2003, Fortress Investment, a private equity and hedge fund firm that has since gone public, bought some of Mr. Jackson’s loans from Bank of America after the pop singer missed some payments. Shortly before Christmas in 2005, Fortress threatened to call the loans because of his delinquency, The Times reported.
A few months later, a new deal was reached, as part of a $300 million refinancing structured by Citigroup.
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/20...uity-firms/?hp
In a statement, the Financial Services Authority cited “fundamental problems with CJL’s compliance and governance system,” referring to Citibank Japan Ltd. by its initials.
“CJL has not accurately identified a series of problems that were recently found,” the agency added, “and the effectiveness of the internal audit has not been ensured.”
The suspension means that the bank will be prohibited from advertising, soliciting customers, or using publicity in relation to its retail banking products.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/bu...i.html?_r=1&hp
The Pop Star and the Private Equity Firms
June 26, 2009, 9:18 am
Michael Jackson delighted people around the world with his music, inspired countless amateur moonwalkers with his moves and had an untold, but surely huge, effect on the sales of individual white gloves.
The pop superstar, who died unexpectedly on Thursday, also kept a lot of people in high finance very busy. His wealth, and, later in his career, his expanding debt, became fodder for deals with private equity firms such as Fortress Investment Group and Colony Capital as well as big banks such as Citigroup and Bank of America.
In the process, his fantastical Neverland Ranch in California was nearly put on the auction block — saved only when one investment firm swooped in to buy the related debt from another firm, with hopes of backing, and profiting from, a revival of Mr. Jackson’s career.
A lot of Mr. Jackson’s monetary dealings have been conducted in private. But several of the pivotal moments have been described in media reports over the years.
Driving many of the deals was Mr. Jackson’s increasingly unmanageable debt load — something that private equity firms can probably relate to these days.
A 2006 article in The New York Times said the principal drains on Mr. Jackon’s finances may have been “monumentally unwise investments that apparently produced equally colossal losses” — and, later, the payments to service his debt.
A financial adviser to Mr. Jackson described how he might have frittered away $50 million on things like amusement-park ideas and “bizarre, global kinds of computerized Marvel comic-book characters bigger than life.”
In 2003, Fortress Investment, a private equity and hedge fund firm that has since gone public, bought some of Mr. Jackson’s loans from Bank of America after the pop singer missed some payments. Shortly before Christmas in 2005, Fortress threatened to call the loans because of his delinquency, The Times reported.
A few months later, a new deal was reached, as part of a $300 million refinancing structured by Citigroup.
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/20...uity-firms/?hp