General Electric shares fell more than 13% Thursday after Madoff whistleblower Harry Markopolos targeted the conglomerate in a new report, accusing it of issuing fraudulent financial statements to hide the extent of its problems.
A website has been set up to disseminate the report,
www.GEfraud.com, where Markopolos calls it “a bigger fraud than Enron.” The financial investigator, who was probing GE for an unidentified hedge fund, writes that after more than a year of research he has discovered “an Enronesque business approach that has left GE on the verge of insolvency.”
“My team has spent the past 7 months analyzing GE’s accounting and we believe the $38 Billion in fraud we’ve come across is merely the tip of the iceberg,” Markopolos said in the 175-page report. Markopolos alleges that GE has a “long history” of accounting fraud, dating to as early as 1995, when it was run by Jack Welch.
“It’s going to make this company probably file for bankruptcy,” Markopolos told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street. ” “WorldCom and Enron lasted about four months. ... We’ll see how GE does.”
One area of Markopolos’ case focuses on GE’s long-term care insurance unit, for which the company had to boost reserves by $15 billion last year. By examining the filings of GE’s counterparties in this business, he alleges that GE is hiding massive losses that will only increase as policyholders grow older. He claims that GE has filed false statements to regulators on the unit. Separately, he goes on to find issues with GE’s accounting on its oil and gas unit Baker Hughes.
“The allegations we have heard are entirely false and misleading,” GE said in a statement. “The Company has never met, spoken to or had contact with Mr. Markopolos, and we are extremely disappointed that an individual with no direct knowledge of GE would choose to make such serious and unsubstantiated claims. GE operates at the highest level of integrity and stands behind its financial reporting. We remain focused on running our businesses every day, following the strategic path we have laid out.”
The Wall Street Journal first reported on Markopolos’ findings, sending GE shares lower.
Markopolos is a Boston-based accounting expert who gained attention after pointing out irregularities with Madoff’s investment strategy, and how it was impossible to generate the returns the fraudster claimed years before the Ponzi scheme was exposed. He was largely ignored at the time. More recently, Markopolos helped uncover a foreign currency trading scandal at a group of banks.
The Markopolos group looking into GE includes forensic accounting veteran John McPherson, co-founder of MMS Advisors, which specializes in the insurance industry.
“GE has been running a decades long accounting fraud by only providing top line revenue and bottom line profits for its business units and getting away with leaving out cost of goods sold, SG&A, R&D and corporate overhead allocations,” the report said.
GE’s market value as of Wednesday’s close was $78.8 billion. With Thursday morning’s skid, the market cap was down to $68.5 billion. Markopolos told the paper the insurance unit would need to raise reserves by more than $18.5 billion.
Here are the main points Markopolos makes on the parts of the website, which are now available to read online:
“This is my accounting fraud team’s ninth insurance fraud case in the past nine years and it’s the biggest, bigger than Enron and WorldCom combined. In fact, GE’s $38 Billion in accounting fraud amounts to over 40% of GE’s market capitalization, making it far more serious than either the Enron or WorldCom accounting frauds.”
“GE utilizes many of the same accounting tricks as Enron did, so much so that we’ve taken to calling this the GEnron case.”
“Of the $29 Billion in new LTC reserves that GE needs, $18.5 Billion requires cash immediately while the remaining $10.5 Billion is a non-cash GAAP charge which accounting rules require to be taken no later than 1QTR 2021. These impending losses will destroy GE’s balance sheet, debt ratios and likely also violate debt covenants.”
“When you benchmark GE to a responsible insurance carrier using going concern accounting such as Prudential (PRU), GE needs $18.5 Billion in additional reserves in order to be able to pay claims. We compare GE’s LTC policies to Prudential and Unum, two insurers with similar pre-mid-2000′s vintage LTC policies, but whose policies have much lower risk characteristics than GE’s. Prudential’s 2018 loss ratio on similar policies was 185% and they’re reserving $113,455 per policy while GE’s loss ratios are several times higher and they’re only reserving $79,000 per policy. Just to match Prudential’s level of reserves would require an immediate $9.5 Billion increase in reserves.”
“GE would change its reporting formats every 2-4 years to prevent analysts from being able to make comparisons across time horizons! In other words, GE went out of its way to make it impossible to analyze the performance of their business units.
“Why would a company do that? We could only think of two reasons: 1) to conceal accounting fraud or 2) because they’re so incompetent they’re not capable of keeping proper books and records. I’m not sure which reason is worse because both are bad and each is a path to bankruptcy.”
“in accounting fraud GE’s debt to equity ratio goes from the 3:1 ratio it reported at the end of the 2nd quarter 2019 to a woefully deficient 17:1.”
GE is already under investigation by the Justice Department and SEC for potential accounting practices. That includes a $22 billion charge the company took in the third quarter related to acquisitions made in its power business.
The struggling industrial conglomerate abruptly removed its former CEO and chairman John Flannery last year after only a year on the job and installed former Danaher CEO Lawrence Culp as his successor.
Flannery had been appointed in August 2017, taking the reins from Jeff Immelt as GE’s stock steadily eroded. The company’s value had continued set new lows as investors remain unconvinced by Flannery’s turnaround vision. Last summer, GE was kicked out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It had been the longest-serving component of the blue chip index at 111 years.
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Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty
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