Judge Denies Wells Fargo Attempt to Block Financial Crisis Suit

February 13, 2013Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticle1 CommentsA federal judge on Tuesday denied Wells Fargo’s attempt to beat back a financial-crisis lawsuit by arguing it conflicted with an earlier settlement.

District Judge Rosemary Collyer in Washington, who is supervising the 2012 multi-bank $25 billion mortgage misconduct settlement, said she did not agree with the bank’s assessment of that settlement.

But she declined to rule on the new Justice Department lawsuit, which is seeking damages and penalties for more than 10 years of alleged misconduct related to government-insured Federal Housing Administration loans, and left a federal court in New York to determine whether the two conflict.

The fourth-largest U.S. bank had asked Collyer in November to rule that the government violated the terms of the multi-bank deal in filing a new case.

Wells Fargo said the earlier consent judgment “wiped the slate clean” for the bank in terms of certain conduct related to its FHA portfolio.

But on Tuesday, Collyer said the language in the settlement “does not have the meaning ascribed to it by Wells Fargo,” and denied the bank’s request for an order enforcing the settlement.

A spokesman for Wells Fargo had no immediate comment. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan, which brought the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment

 

Copyright 2013 Reuters. Click for restrictions.Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetCategories: National NewsTopics: Wells Fargo financial crisis, Wells Fargo Justice Department, Wells Fargo mortgage lawsuitHave a hot lead? Email us at newsdesk

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Aon Report Finds Loss of Company Reputation Linked to Crisis Events

October 4, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticleComments

According to the Aon-sponsored Reputation Review 2012, a report recently issued by Oxford Metrica, an independent analytics and advisory firm, 7 out of 10 companies “measured in the report that were impacted by disasters in 2011.”

 They lost “more than one-third of their value and two companies lost almost 90 percent.” Aon therefore concludes that a focus on the supply chain “can make the difference between organization growth and failure post-crisis.”

The review points out that in order to analyze the “dynamic between corporate reputation and financial performance, it is important to study the effects of large-scale crises, whether manmade or driven by external forces. Events such as the Japan tsunami and earthquake as well as various accounting scandals, have caused many organizations to lose value.”

Randy Nornes, executive vice president with Aon Risk Solutions, also noted: “While the principles of reputation recovery are made more vivid by crisis, they apply equally to lesser events that can still damage a company’s reputation. Last year’s research revealed that 80 percent of firms will lose 20 percent of their value once every five years due to reputational issues.

“Any company

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