The review : Goldman Sachs- ABACUS deal
In 2007 when the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression exploded its impacts were far reached and were devastating. The crisis was caused due to the borrowers unable to refinance their mortgages. During the early 2000s the mortgages were availabe at very low interest rates due to excess credit. The interest rates reached at a historically low during mid 2000s. These loans were given against collateral that was characterized by undesirable financial metrics such as high debt-to-income ratio and low credit scores etc. Even against such risky getting mortgages was very easy and at a low interest rate as well. Most of the borrowers purchased houses with the loans thus, incresing
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SEC, The Security and Exchange Commision acts as the primary enforcer of federal securities laws. Those who violate the securities law can be questioned and penalised by SEC. Thus, in the SEC vs Goldman, Sachs & Co. Involvement of parties and instruments was clear but the exchange of information between them was in conflict. The parties agreed that John Paulson of Paulson & Co. , a hedge fund founded in 1994 was accused of betting against ABACUS CDO, approached Goldman for assembling ABACUS i.e. Synthetic CDO for $15 million. To select what collateral to be included in ABACUS Goldman went on to assign outside asset manager (ACA Capital), which eventually comprised of only subprime mortgage securities. IKB- a german based bank, then purchased ABACUS from Goldman. Paulson wo shorted ABACUS by entering into credit default swaps for getting protection on specific CDO layers. As subprime market crashed the CDOs failed and Paulson ended up with net $1 billion while IKB lost $150 million. ACA Capital lost $900 million and Goldman ended up losing $100 million. The parties disagree on the amount of information disclosed by Goldman to the “other side” of transaction parties and sales stragies by Goldman to close the