Bank Accounting & Finance articles from June 2005

Bank Accounting & Finance archives from June 2005

Bank mergers and their impact: a survey of academic studies: there seems to be no clear or universal silver bullet for postmerger success in banking as presented in empirical studies.
June 1, 2005... As the stock market has shown signs of rebounding from its poor performance at the start of the decade, so too has merger activity in the banking industry. Overall levels of merger activity tend to correlate with stock market levels as the...

Effect of bank acquisitions on shareholder returns: one acquisition pays off for shareholders, two do not. What were some differentiating factors?(Metro-County Bank)(Southern Financial Bancorp.)(Horizon Bank)
June 1, 2005... Between 1999 and 2002, Southern Financial Bank (SFB) acquired three smaller banks in the Washington, DC/Richmond, Virginia, corridor and grew to become a nearly $1 billion bank. We tested whether returns for the acquiring bank are different...

Extending due diligence to improve mergers and acquisitions: the track record of merger and acquisition deals points to shortcomings in the traditional due-diligence approach.
June 1, 2005... The $47 billion acquisition of Fleet Bank by Bank of America in April 2004 created the number 3 bank in the United States. With assets estimated at $966 billion, it is exceeded only by Citigroup and the combined Bank One Corp. and J.P. Morgan...

The state of the electronic mortgage industry: from paper to digital: trends in costs, margins and technological progress.
June 1, 2005... The Mortgage Bankers Association of America (MBA) recently estimated that 66 percent of the $3.8 trillion in residential mortgages that were booked in 2003 were re-financings. That was the peak year. Loan volumes are now down. Mortgage...

S Corporation elections after the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004: corporations are able to provide a higher after-tax rate of return to their shareholders, which makes remaining independent a more attractive alternative.(Community Banking)
June 1, 2005... Over the last eight years that banks and thrifts have been able to convert to S corporation status, the number of banks and thrifts making the election has steadily increased each year. Today, more than 24 percent of financial institutions are...

Design, implementation and assessment of an entity-level antifraud program: functions across the organization must collaborate to prevent fraud.(Internal Control)
June 1, 2005... Recent events involving alleged misdeeds by corporate executives and independent auditors have damaged investor confidence in the financial markets. Adelphia, WorldCom, Tyco and other reported management frauds highlight the need for strong,...

Finance and accounting outsourcing can improve control: what best practices of outsourcing can protect control and compliance?(Outsourcing)
June 1, 2005... More and more organizations are either outsourcing or considering outsourcing some or all of their finance and accounting processes to a specialist provider. And to date, the business case for doing so has been a relatively straightforward one...

Business management in the age of terrorism: a good starting point for strategic thinking about an unpleasant, but potentially critical, aspect of risk management.(Books)
June 1, 2005... Recent years have witnessed great advances in technology that make worldwide communications almost instantaneous. While certainly there are many positive aspects to this technologically shrinking world--as became obvious to me this past year...

Advice from Israeli business leaders.(Books)(Business Under Fire: How Israeli Companies Are Succeeding in the Face of Terror and What We Can Learn from Them)
June 1, 2005... Amos Shapira, President, El Al Israel Airlines: "Plan for flexibility" Flexibility is very important--not in terms of schedules, because you want schedules to be consistent--but in terms of operations. For example, the fleet. Different...