Ambac Rocky Balboa oder chapter 11

Warum ist denn auf einmal so ein riesen Volumen hier?  

und endlich durch den Widerstand bei 0,15$  

.....könnte es diesmal ein nachhaltiger Anstieg sein?

denn der WAMU-Anstieg wird wieder im freien Fall enden, denn Rosen und oder die Zocker wird/werden schon demensprechend agieren, wäre ja nicht das erste mal.......

Aber, AMBAC?  

Gibt es denn irgend einen Grund für den plötzlichen rasanten Anstieg?
Kann nichts finden.  

die WAMU Geschichte wird sich noch lange ziehen, denke ich. Bekommt nur im Moment ein wenig Aufmerksamkeit mM. Aber anderes Thema.  

The mortgage crisis rolled through the country in 2007 and 2008, with many of the abuses that led to the meltdown of home prices happening much earlier.

But it’s only been recently, it seems, that regulators have stepped up their efforts to figure out what happened, and punish those who flouted the law in originating home loans and packaging them into securities.

The latest, according to this piece in Monday’s WSJ by Ruth Simon: New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has issued subpoenas to four bond-insurance companies as part of his expanding probe of mortgage-securitization practices.

At the same time, California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris is expected to announce Monday a new law-enforcement effort aimed at mortgage-industry practices, people familiar with the initiative said. The effort will cover a range of activities, from loan origination to the packaging of mortgages into securities, and will include both civil and criminal prosecutions, these people said.

Schneiderman has issued subpoenas to units of Ambac Financial Group, Assured Guaranty Ltd., MBIA, and Syncora Holdings, people familiar with the investigation said.

The bond insurers aren’t the subject of the investigation, these people added, but have been asked to provide information about their dealings with banks that packaged mortgage loans into securities.

Schneiderman’s office has asked the bond insurers for information regarding claims paid to bond investors and about litigation and settlements the insurers have entered into with banks that packaged loans into securities.

The subpoenas are the latest sign of how state and federal officials are stepping up their scrutiny of the mortgage machine. Federal prosecutors, for instance, are using the False Claims Act in an effort to recoup government losses on soured mortgage loans. The tools available to Schneiderman include the state’s Martin Act, which doesn’t require prosecutors to prove intent to defraud.

Bond insurers have argued they were deceived by banks about the quality of the loans they guaranteed. They have pushed banks to repurchase troubled mortgages and gone to court when that effort has failed.  

Ambac hat wohl eine Vorladung bekommen, mit der Bitte um Informationen. Sie sollen aber nicht Gegenstand der Untersuchungen werden.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-23/...vestigation-wsj-says.html  

Untersuchung von 3 weiterer Banken auf Hypotheken und Verbriefung !!

Anwälte erweitern Ihre Untersuchung der Banken auf Hypotheken und Verbriefung  gegen 3 weitere Kreditinstitute aus: JPMorgan, Dt.Bank, UBS

 

http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2011/05/23/...-mortgage-scrutiny/?amp

http://online.wsj.com/article/...2702303654804576339553223077320.html

 

....wenn da mal nicht so einige die Ohren langgezogen bekommen, und ggf. Stühle gerückt,  bzw. fallen werden.......  

....wie sieht hier denn die Terminplanung aus.....

01) Takefuji läuft bis zum Juli
02) Quartalsbericht (4-6/2011) kommt frühestens Anfang August.
03) CH11 soll bis in den Dezember + 30 Tage weiterlaufen

und weiter?
und überhaupt?  

Ambac’s Latest Problem Is the IRS
Feds Say Insurer May Owe $700M

Tuesday, January 11, 2011 ( ist nicht der neuste Bericht,aber immernoch aktuel)

Ambac Assurance’s bid to protect its municipal bond insurance book from the Internal Revenue Service faces a daunting hurdle in federal court as the U.S. government argues it has every right to collect taxes it is owed regardless of how the company structures itself.

The IRS claims Ambac Assurance — which had $312.8 million of cash in the middle of 2010 — may owe more than $700 million in taxes. Its parent company is bankrupt.

A move by federal authorities to seize Ambac’s assets to satisfy tax claims could detonate a catastrophic chain of events for the company: state regulators could assume control of Ambac Assurance, causing a technical default that would trigger a $3 billion payment to terminate swap policies. Any resources the company has to pay claims on municipal bond policies would be trampled.

The solution was to shunt the potential tax liability into a segregated account currently under the control of Wisconsin regulators and beyond the purview of federal authorities.

Wisconsin’s Department of Insurance argues the federal government does not have the sovereignty to seize assets the state controls.

The IRS, though, contends that a reshuffling of assets and liabilities cannot change the fact that the company owes taxes. While the IRS acknowledges it cannot place a lien on assets controlled by a state, the insurer itself is not controlled by a state.

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, in Rehabilitation of Segregated Account of Ambac Assurance Corp. v. United States of America, will decide.

Once the second-biggest bond insurer, Ambac ran into serious trouble in late 2007 because of decaying credit quality in its structured finance policies, which included contracts guaranteeing to cover losses on mortgage bonds and credit default swaps.

Sean Dilweg, who served as the Wisconsin insurance commissioner from January 2007 until last week, enacted a plan in March last year to prevent claims in a $114.7 billion structured ­finance insurance book from ­overwhelming the company’s capital and ruining policies in its $223.2 billion muni insurance book.

Wisconsin placed about 1,000 of ­Ambac’s riskiest policies, with about $60 billion par value, in a walled-off account. Claims in the separate account were ­temporarily frozen to stop Ambac from hemorrhaging more than $150 million a month. The account includes policies on bonds with names like Residential ­Funding Corp., GMACM Home Loan Trust, Residential Asset Mortgage ­Products, and the infamous Las Vegas Monorail — a muni credit.

Dilweg proposed a rehabilitation plan in October which would give segregated account policyholders a quarter of their claims in cash and 75% in notes backed by the company’s surplus.

Ambac issued a $2 billion note to the segregated account, which remains its only asset. Payments on claims would come from the cash flows generated by the note.

The segregated account already faces more than $1 billion in unpaid claims.

Nothing in this rehabilitation of the segregated account was expected to impair the municipal insurance book — that is, until Oct. 28, when the IRS sent the company a “mild request.”

Ambac Assurance had submitted for and received a $700 million tax refund based on accounting methods the IRS was now questioning.

The dispute centers on how Ambac recorded losses on its credit-default swap policies.

Ambac was losing money on its ­mortgage CDS policies, and paying out to its counterparties as mortgage quality eroded. The company booked these losses as “ordinary losses,” which are deducted from taxable ­income. Thus, its taxable income was ­reduced by ordinary losses on the CDS.

The IRS has never prevailed on how exactly to record CDS gains or losses, but it holds out the possibility that they should be booked not as ordinary losses but as “capital losses.” Capital losses can only be deducted from other capital gains — not from total taxable income.

In short, Ambac might have to pay back the $700 million refund it collected because its CDS losses shouldn’t have been deducted from taxable income.

By the time of the IRS inquiry, Ambac’s parent company, Ambac Financial Group, was on the verge of defaulting on its $1.6 billion of debt. It was unable to raise capital and already was headed for bankruptcy.

But the IRS inquiry raised an uncomfortable prospect. If the IRS determines Ambac Assurance owes and cannot pay $700 million in taxes, the government can declare a “deficiency,” under which it places a levy on the company’s liquid assets to satisfy the tax obligation.

That in turn would most likely prompt the Wisconsin insurance department to rehabilitate the entirety of Ambac Assurance — not just the segregated account — to protect resources devoted to paying claims to muni bond policyholders.

A rehabilitation of Ambac Assurance would trigger a technical default under many of its CDS contracts, and force the company to close out the swaps and pay whatever it owes. As of its parent company’s bankruptcy filing in October, that amount was $3 billion.

Dilweg promptly ordered any IRS claims into the segregated account, where they would be treated like any other claim: part in cash, part in IOU.

Ambac Financial Group promptly filed for bankruptcy. Dilweg obtained a state court injunction prohibiting the IRS from “commencing or prosecuting any actions, claims, lawsuits or other formal legal proceedings ... in any state, federal or foreign court.”

The prohibition extended to Ambac Assurance, the segregated account, any subsidiary, and the rehabilitator. The state court then claimed “exclusive jurisdiction” over any such claims.

Wisconsin and the IRS will fight this out in federal court. The Wisconsin ­regulators rely on the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which stipulates that states have the authority to regulate insurance businesses without ­interference from most federal regulations.

Dilweg, citing state insurance law, treats the IRS claim as subordinate to ­policyholders claims. He says the IRS is attempting to “jump the line” to receive its allocation, and by doing so it violates state law and causes a “massive disruption” to the efforts of rehabilitation.

“Permitting the IRS to levy or attach on assets based on a disputed tax liability would circumvent the state insurance priority statute because it would allow the United States to get paid in full, ahead of policyholders,” Dilweg argued in federal court.

The IRS acknowledges it has no ­authority to disrupt state insurance rehabilitations, and no access to the assets ­under Wisconsin’s custody. However, Ambac Assurance isn’t in Wisconsin’s custody.

Wisconsin is rehabilitating the ­segregated account — not the hundreds of ­billions of dollars in the rest of Ambac Assurance.

“Simply put, they wish to have their cake — keep the Ambac general account out of rehabilitation — and eat it too — consign the Ambac general account’s potential federal tax liability out of rehabilitation,” the IRS said in a court document filed Jan. 7.

The IRS argues this is not an insurance dispute, but a tax one. It points out that Ambac’s “tentative” tax refund was granted before the segregated account was ­created, and a corporate restructuring ­cannot escape its repayment.

The regulator’s arguments about the integrity of the rehab proceeding, the IRS argues, “obscure the indisputable fact that the Ambac general account is neither under the custody of the rehabilitation court nor subject to the Wisconsin insolvency statutes.”  

Friday, May 6, 2011

By Patrick McGee


The Internal Revenue Service just can’t catch a break in its quest to retrieve $700 million in tax refunds from defunct bond insurer Ambac Assurance Corp.

leider konnte ich nicht mehr reinkopieren, so wie es aussieht hat die IRS wieder verloren, jetzt kommt nach meiner Meinung eine Einigung.  

....sein das nach dem dritten mal "verloren" die endlich ihr "Kla..e" halten und den Plan, so wie er ist zähneknirschend akzeptieren................  

ja bin dafür, oder eine einigung welche den re. plan nicht gefaerdet.  

wurde das hier schon gepostet?????

Bloomberg
Ambac Financial Seeks to Block $116.8 Million Tax Claims
May 23, 2011, 6:42 PM EDT

By Tiffany Kary

(Updates with filing jurisdiction in fourth paragraph.)

May 23 (Bloomberg) -- Ambac Financial Group Inc., the bankrupt holding company for a failed bond insurer, seeks to disallow a $116.8 million tax claim from the city of New York Department of Finance, saying its tax treatment is “illogical.”

The finance department’s demand for $77.9 million in both city and state taxes plus $38.9 million in interest arises from inconsistent treatment of Ambac’s income, the company said in court papers filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan today.

“Such inconsistent treatment of the income and expense from the very same business is not only illogical, but it lacks any legal merit,” Ambac said in the papers..................

weiter  unter Quelle: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-05-23/...illion-tax-claims.html  

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/23/...rsonalFinance&rpc=43

 

 

 

Hypotheken-Ermittlungen in den USA ziehen weitere Kreise

Dienstag, 24. Mai 2011, 15:05 Uhr

New York (Reuters) - Die Ermittlungen der New Yorker Staatsanwaltschaft wegen umstrittener Hypothekengeschäft ziehen weitere Kreise.

Generalstaatsanwalt Eric Schneiderman hat Kreisen zufolge auch von der Deutschen Bank Informationen verlangt. Betroffen sein zudem die Schweizer Großbank UBS, das US-Institut JPMorgan Chase und die Royal Bank of Scotland, sagte eine mit den Vorgängen vertraute Person am Montag. Außerdem seien Vertreter der Anleihenversicherungen Ambac Financial Group, MBIA, Syncora Holdings und Assured Guaranty vorgeladen worden.

Bei der Deutschen Bank, UBS, JPMorgan und Ambac wollte niemand Stellung nehmen. Bei RBS und Syncora war vorerst niemand erreichbar. Ein MBIA-Sprecher bestätigte, dass das Unternehmen im Zusammenhang mit seinen Klagen gegen verschieden Finanzinstitute betreffend die Qualität von versicherten Kreditverbriefungen eine Vorladungen erhalten hat. Bei Assured Guaranty hieß es, der Konzern werde Untersuchungen unterstützen, eine Vorladung wurde aber nicht bestätigt.

Seit Monaten untersuchen amerikanische Behörden, ob Millionen von Zwangsversteigerungen von Häusern überschuldeter Familien rechtens waren und ob bei der Verbriefung von Hypothekenkrediten getrickst wurde, um Risiken zu verschleiern. Auch ausländische Banken geraten dabei zunehmend ins Visier. Auch die Deutsche Bank wurde bereits wegen unsauberer Hypothekengeschäfte verklagt. In allen 50 Bundesstaaten ermitteln die Staatsanwaltschaften und auch die US-Börsenaufsicht SEC untersucht.

Schneiderman ermittelt in dieser Causa auch bereits gegen die US-Institute Bank of America, Goldman Sachs und Morgan Stanley.

http://de.reuters.com/article/companiesNews/idDEBEE74N0EA20110524

 

Hier sind die Gründe des New Yorker Generalstaatsanwaltes

http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/...s-to-rip-into-top-lenders.html/

 

.........wie lange mag es noch dauern bis erste Ergebnisse von der Bankenbefragung (Untersuchung) ans Licht kommen........

So langsam kann ja mal was passieren......  :-(  

Und das ist kein gutes Zeichen. Besser ihr kauft euch ein paar gesicherte Anleihen dazu.  

 

Was meinst du?

 

Der Regulator hat der Holding ein Angebot gemacht die NOL für die AAC zu kaufen, dafür hat die AAC aber nur 1 MRd an Cash und die Holding benötigt 2,4 Mrd um die Gläubiger und die IRS auszahlen zu können, damit die Holding CH11 verlassen kann. Anscheinend hat der Regulator zu wenig geboten und dann droht man halt mit Konsequenzen für die dummen Kommunen und naiven USA-Behörden.

Ich rate aber weiterhin wenn dann zur Aktie auch in einem gesunden Verhälntis die gesicherte Anleihen mit zu kaufen.

Beim Gericht hat die Drohung schon mal gezogen und bis zum 5.12. wird sicherlich was geschehen. Takefuji reicht am 17 Juli beim Gericht den Zahlungsplan ein, der von diesem abgesegnet werden muss, bevor Jemand Geld von Taki bekommt. Leider liegt dieses Datum hinter dem 6. Juli und ABK musste irgendwie Zeit schinden.

Wenn ich jetzt aber annehme das der Regulator 1 Mrd für 2,4 Mrd Wert von 7,4 Mrd NOL bietet, dann würde ich auch dankend als Holding ablehen und mir die ganze AAC untern Nagel reißen oder die AAC einfach verkaufen. Die AAC verdient ja 800 Millionen pro Jahr bis ins JAhr 2098. Also feuer frei je nach Laune.  

Ambac Financial Group Inc. (ABKFQ) found an offer from the Wisconsin regulator overseeing the wind-down of its failed bond insurer “disappointing” and will file a bankruptcy plan by June, a company lawyer said.

The regulator offered Ambac a term sheet laying out a resolution to financial disputes between the holding company and its operating unit, Ambac Assurance Corp., lawyer Peter Ivanick said today. The outline was “very disappointing,” and differed dramatically from one Ambac Financial had been discussing since November, Ivanick told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman at a hearing in Manhattan.

“OCI needs to improve its offer drastically and it needs to do so quickly,” Ivanick said, referring to the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance, the Wisconsin regulator.

Since Ambac Financial filed for Chapter 11, it has been in dispute with constituents, including its operating unit, over who gets $7.3 billion in net operating losses to use for tax benefits. The Internal Revenue Service has challenged claims by both companies to tax benefits.

Ambac will file a plan by June, before its July deadline to propose a reorganization, with or without an agreement with OCI, Ivanick said.

Ambac Assurance was the second-largest bond insurer before the 2008 financial crisis, when mounting defaults on mortgages swamped the company with claims. It guaranteed about $256 billion of $1.4 trillion in insured municipal debt, according to Bloomberg data. Ambac Financial listed liabilities of $1.68 billion in its petition.

The holding company case is In re Ambac Financial Group Inc. (ABK), 10-15973, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporter on this story: Tiffany Kary in New York at tkary@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Pickering at