Sự trớ trêu ở đây là rằng những chính phủ châu Âu đã không vội vàng để lừa đảo viễn thông với cuộc đấu giá giấy phép UMTS của họ đã từ bỏ lợi nhuận bất chính, Kho bạc của các công ty viễn thông đã bị cạn kiệt và thu nhập trong tương lai phải được dành riêng để phục vụ các khoản nợ lớn. | Managing Liabilities But they also are used for speculating creating liabilities that hit a company hard usually at the most inopportune moment. Financial companies authorized to take deposits such as retail banks commercial banks and insurance companies have a major liabilities exposure toward their depositors. As long as the companies are solvent and the market thinks they are well managed depositors are happy to leave their money with the entity to which they have it entrusted. But when a financial institution is in trouble depositors stampede to take their money out to safeguard their capital. Many examples dramatize the aftermath of poor management of one s liabilities. Nissan Mutual Life sold individual annuities paying guaranteed rates of 5 to 50 percent. It did so without hedging these liabilities. In the mid-1990s a plunge in Japanese government bond yields to record low levels created a large gap between the interest rates Nissan Mutual committed itself to pay and the return it was earning on its own investments. This gap led to the company s downfall. On April 25 1997 Japan s Finance Ministry ordered the company to suspend its business. Nissan Mutual was the first Japanese insurer to go bankrupt in five decades with losses totaling billion. Two years later in 1999 a mismatch between assets and liabilities rocked General American Life a 66-year-old St. Louis life insurer with 14 billion in assets. At the core of this crisis were billion of debt instruments known as short-term funding agreements General American had issued. At first General American Life escaped liquidation but on July 30 1999 Moody s Investors Service reduced the company s debt and financial strength ratings by a notch from A2 to A3. All on its own this reduction would not have been serious but market sentiment was negative and the downgrade triggered a bank-type run. Within 10 days the crisis of confidence brought the insurer to its knees. The lesson to be learned from this .
