Freedom Holding Corp. has some explaining to do. The financial services firm has quite improbably become one of the fastest growing companies on the planet. It lists its shares on the Nasdaq, is incorporated in Las Vegas, but for all intents and purposes runs its operations mostly in Kazakhstan.
Financial Services
Amy Walker’s War on Credit Suisse and a System of Entitled Indifference
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For more than a decade Amy Walker, a research analyst in London, has been waging a ceaseless battle for justice in connection with what she alleges was a sexual assault by her colleague at Credit Suisse.
Financial Services
The Pity of Wirecard, Part II: Bezzle Never Sleeps
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If questions about the integrity of Wirecard AG’s accounting in its crucial Asian operations are ever to be resolved, Singapore regulators will need to step back and take a long, hard look at James Henry O’Sullivan’s relationship to the Aschheim, Germany–based company. Prosecutors at Singapore’s Consumer Affairs Department have been investigating Wirecard’s fast-growing Asian division, claiming in a March 8 filing that employees in its Singapore office orchestrated a complex, multiyear scheme to inflate the company’s revenue.
Financial Services
The Pity of Wirecard, Part I: Oliver’s Army
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Few companies can explain their meteoric growth as alluringly as Wirecard AG. In one preferred narrative, Wirecard presents as Europe’s leading financial technology innovator, a globe-spanning developer of white label code and applications that remove the friction from electronic payments. And in another, it’s a nimble bank, steadily generating low-risk revenue through the sale of integrated banking and credit-card processing services to businesses, and prepaid credit-cards to consumers.
Financial Services
Wirecard AG: Something Is Terribly Wrong Here
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After the Financial Times published a pair of whistleblower-driven exposés that suggested some of Wirecard’s parabolic growth in the Asia-Pacific region resulted from a purported multiyear revenue inflation scheme, anyone wanting to better understand the German payments company’s situation would do well to “follow the money.”
Financial Services
Newton Glassman and Other People’s Money
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Things are not going well for Newton Glassman. In April he was the subject of a lengthy exposé that detailed the many ways his direction of Catalyst Capital Group Inc., a Toronto-based private equity fund with $4.3 billion in capital commitments, and its sister company Callidus Capital Corp. should alarm investors and regulators. Plus, Glassman directed the fund’s plunge into a series of costly and reputation-threatening lawsuits against a host of purported enemies.
Financial Services
Newton Glassman’s Legacy of Ashes
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It was corporate skulduggery at its most audacious. Last September Frank Newbould dined at Scaramouche, a swanky downtown Toronto restaurant, with a businessman who said he would like to hire Newbould as an arbitrator. In reality, this was a ruse to engineer an attempted sting on Newbould, a retired Ontario judge, as the National Post reported.
Financial Services
Mr. Boyer’s War
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For eight years, Craig Boyer was a senior executive at Callidus Capital, and by the time he quit in 2016 he was its chief underwriter and vice president. But last year Boyer sued Callidus for CA$100,000 in damages, claiming the company had denied him health and other benefits and seeking the return of his stock options.
Financial Services
Wirecard AG: The Great Indian Shareholder Robbery
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Wirecard AG is the luckiest company you have never heard of.
Financial Services
BofI Federal Bank: Annals of the Bank of Misery
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If you put together all the chief executive officers from the financial services industry in one room and asked them, “Who looks back on the years 2007 to 2009 with fondness?” it’s a very safe bet that only one hand would be raised. That hand would be on the arm of Gregory Garrabrants. The enterprise he has run since October 2007, BofI Federal Bank in La Jolla, California, is about as unlikely an institution to have prospered in those years as can be imagined.
Financial Services
BofI Federal Bank: Disclosing Little, Saying Less
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BofI Federal Bank’s disclosure practices seem baffling at best if the standard it’s judged by is how well it informs investors about developments that could potentially change the risk profile of their capital.