« Yosemite | Main | Alcatraz »
July 12, 2005
Death of a Company
Being the savvy investor I am, I was invited to participate in the WorldCom class action lawsuit. Actually, I didn't have that much stock, but figured the settlement might buy us breakfast so what the heck. Yesterday, I received the "Supplemental Plan of Allocation" for the disbursement of the $6.128 billion settlement fund. Included in the plan is a day-by-day assessment of the impact on stock price of the various accounting misstatements, prepared by the Stanford Consulting Group. Here is their estimate of the impact (labeled inflation) on the WorldCom stock price for the start, end and first day of each quarter:
Makes an interesting picture, eh?
It just goes to show that ethics is a binary proposition, in business and life. Now we're off to breakfast!
Comments
So, my understanding is that there is a whole new bureaucracy in paying back investors - so complicated, in fact, that it will take many, many years to find potential investors, and "pay" them back. Only pennies on the dollar. The worst part is that the government regulations are much of what's causing this - as well as the usual "greed" - some of the "consultants" overseeing the process are making something like a $1M themselves! Outrageous. The 80's (90's) are back!
Just another example of greedy people taking other's money and having little remorse. Sad, actually.
Posted by: Manno at July 17, 2005 09:28 PM
