Good on Andy Haldane, the chief economist of the Bank of England, for telling it as it is. In an explosive intervention, Haldane has just compared the financial crisis and Brexit to the Bank of England’s Michael Fish moments. He was referring, of course, to the day just before the greatest storm for 300 years hit Britain on Oct 15, 1987, when the famous weather forecaster got it spectacularly wrong. “Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way… well, if you’re watching, don’t worry, there isn’t!” he said.  In the case of the Great Recession, the analogy is perfect. In the case of Brexit, the error was a reverse Michael Fish, another case of the Y2K millennium bug: a prediction of immediate disaster which failed to materialise. The Bank expected a hurricane but none came, as it was put to Haldane (it’s a “fair cop”, he replied).

Wages in the US grew at their fastest pace since 2009 last month, pointing to continued momentum in the labour market and putting the country on course for a string of interest rate rises this year. Average hourly earnings increased by 2.9pc compared with the year before, the largest annual increase in more than seven years, while 156,000 jobs were created in December. Although the employment figure fell short of the 178,000 widely expected by economists, it was enough to suggest that the economy is steaming ahead.  The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.7pc in December, from a nine-year low of 4.6pc in November, as more people entered the labour market, in a sign of confidence in the economic recovery. Over the course of 2016, more than two million jobs were created in the US.  This set of jobs data will be the last for President Obama, as he makes way for Donald Trump, who is set to take office later this month.  President elect Trump has pledged to increase spending on the country's infrastructure, cut taxes and reduce red tape, three measures widely expected to boost growth this year.  The US jobs market is expected to hit full employment this year, and the country's central bank, the Federal Reserve, is set to push through interest rate rises in response.  Last month, the Fed increased the benchmark rate by .25 percentage points to a range of 0.25pc to 0.50pc. A further three rate increases are forecast for this year.  Kully Samra, managing director of Charles Schwab in the UK, said that despite December’s numbers missing forecasts, the US economy still had a robust labour market.

The US vice-president, Joe Biden, has said it is “absolutely mindless” for Donald Trump not to have confidence in the intelligence community, as the heads of the US agencies prepared to present their findings on Russian election interference to the president-elect.  The unprecedented dispute between Trump and the intelligence services he will soon control broke into the open at a congressional hearing on Thursday as the head of US intelligence publicly defended his analysts, who he said “stand more resolutely” than ever behind their conclusion of “Russian interference in our electoral process”.  Former Indiana lawmaker and member of the Senate intelligence committee has been banned from entering Russia: ‘I’m not a big fan of Putin’  Biden said it would be legitimate to question intelligence and ask for more detail or disagree but “dangerous” to publicly criticise the agencies and claim to know more than them.  “For a president not to have confidence in, not to be prepared to listen to, the myriad intelligence agencies, from defence intelligence to the CIA, is absolutely mindless,” he said in an interview with PBS.  “The idea that you may know more than the intelligence community knows – it’s like saying I know more about physics than my professor. I didn’t read the book, I just know I know more.”

The Bank of England’s chief economist has admitted his profession is in crisis having failed to foresee the 2008 financial crash and having misjudged the impact of the Brexit vote.  Andrew Haldane, said it was “a fair cop” referring to a series of forecasting errors before and after the financial crash which had brought the profession’s reputation into question.  Blaming the failure of economic models to cope with “irrational behaviour” in the modern era, the economist said the profession needed to adapt to regain the trust of the public and politicians.... Haldane described the collapse of Lehman Brothers as the economics profession’s “Michael Fish moment” (a reference to when the BBC weather forecaster predicted in 1987 that the UK would avoid a hurricane that went on to devastate large parts of southern England). Speaking at the Institute for Government in central London, Haldane said meteorological forecasting had improved markedly following that embarrassing mistake and that the economics profession could follow in its footsteps.  The bank has come under intense criticism for predicting a dramatic slowdown in the UK’s fortunes in the event of a vote for Brexit only for the economy to bounce back strongly and remain one of the best performing in the developed world.  Haldane is known to be concerned about mounting criticism of experts and the potential for Threadneedle Street’s forecasts to be dismissed by politicians if errors persist.  Former Tory ministers, including the former foreign secretary William Hague and the former justice secretary Michael Gove, last year attacked the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, for predicting a dramatic slowdown in growth if the country voted to leave the EU.

Donald Trump's reflation rally will short-circuit. Rising borrowing costs will blow fuses across the world before fiscal stimulus arrives, if it in fact arrives.

By the end of 2017 it will be clear that nothing has changed for the better. Powerful deflationary forces retain an invisible grip over the global economy. Bond yields will ratchet up further and then come clattering down again – ultimately driving 10-year US yields below zero before the decade is over.  There are few ‘shovel ready’ projects for Trump’s infrastructure blitz. The headline figures are imaginary. His plan will be whittled down by Congress....The House will pass tax cuts for the rich but these are regressive, with a low fiscal multiplier. The choice of an anti-deficit Ayatollah to head the budget office implies swinging cuts to federal spending. These will hit the poor, with a high multiplier.  This Gatsby mix is mostly self-defeating...

As the old year draws to a close, there is more encouraging news on the economic front which is again quite out of kilter with the largely gloomy predictions of mainstream forecasters. According to a survey of chief financial officers by the professional services company, Deloitte, optimism among Britain’s leading companies is at an 18-month high. Business leaders are notably more upbeat about prospects than they were three months ago.  This is obviously very welcome news, but it is small thanks to a Government which seems to be doing its level best to make the costs and complexity of doing business in Britain ever more burdensome. The latest example of such wrong-headedness is in changes to the business rates system, due to come into effect next April. For some businesses, they mean an immediate increase in the tax on their properties of 42 per cent, with still worse to come in future years. Particularly badly hit will be smaller traders in London and the South East. Many face an eventual doubling or worse in their rates bill.  A significant number will be broken by the increases, and in despair close up shop. Others will find ways of passing the extra costs on to their customers, or alternatively demand rent reductions from landlords. Still more will simply take the hit to profits and invest less. Yet however they choose to absorb the impact, it’s going to do lasting damage to some of the most prosperous parts of the UK economy.

When an Italian government official tells you "the banks are turning the corner" it means that the real trouble is just beginning...Renzi wasted time and political & financial capital on importing hundreds of thousands of Africans and billeting them on unfortunate Italians.... Yes  indeed, "Whether Italy is out of the woods is a burning question" is an accurate and pithy caveat to the latest declaration that this week`s sticking plaster solution means every is now rosy for Italian banks, the Italian economy...

...and of course by inference the EU. It will be until the next crisis hits 2 or 3 weeks down the road.  This bailout will certainly help MPS in the short term, but it doesn`t offer any solution to the problems effecting larger financial institutions such as  Unibanco. As A-EP points out the tapering of bond purchases by the ECB will lead to  rising bond yields doesn't bode well for Italy and it`s banks...." The Italian state will be allowed to compensate some of 40,000 retail investors shunted into MPS bonds without understanding the risk, but these rebates will be partial, glacially-slow, and conducted on a means-tested basis.  Fabio Fois and Giuseppe Maraffino from Barclays said the rescue falls short of a “systemic solution”, arguing that funding is too thin and the MPS model cannot easily be replicated. “We estimate that the largest six Italian banks could need about €30bn in total to clean-up their balance sheets,” they said. Some analysts think it could take €50bn, or more if the next global downturn hits early. If so, this risks another messy drama a year hence in even less hospitable circumstances."

 

 Exporters demand professionalism from the future government, said Mihai Ionescu, the president of the National Association of Romanian Exporters and Importers (ANEIR). "Our first request is for the future government to be professional. Secondly, we would want for it not to overdo it with social policies. If they do that, meaning if they overdo it with social policies without helping the economy, then I don't see a solid future for this country. The third thing that we are asking for is: «Show some love to Romanian capital!»".  Mihai Ionescu warned that this year, the export growth rate is slower than the growth rate of the GDP. Also, this is the first time when Romanian exports outside the EU are dropping, he added. Another great discontent of the exporters is the elimination of the Foreign Trade Department of the Ministry of the Economy, according to the president of the ANEIR, who stated: "We are disappointed in the fact that the team in the Ministry of the Economy has succeeded in destructuring the Foreign Trade Department. We had a structure that was exclusively in charge of foreign trade. Some people thought we didn't need a department for that. That is not true! The existence of that department is very important. But that is how the technocrats saw fit to help exporters - they have dismantled that structure and they have frozen all departures of those nominated for those positions in the respective embassies. We used to have that kind of representatives in our embassies. This year only a few people went abroad to take those positions and they did so temporarily. Half of Romania's foreign network no longer exists. I am not saying they were geniuses, but we could rely on them. Good or bad, they were there and many of them were useful". Mihai Ionescu also mentioned the fact that the Ministry of the Economy has blocked the promotion of exports, despite the fact that a lot of money has been allocated from the state budget this year. "We have not even achieved half of the program for the promotion of exports planned in the beginning of this year". In this context, businesspeople are going to sue the representatives of the government who are guilty of the things mentioned above, like Mr. Ionescu, who mentioned: "We have decided, together with the representatives of the business sector: this government isn't going to go away just by handing over papers. We are going to take them to court, because they have to pay for what they have done and for what they haven't done. They are appointed and paid by us to help the economy. They are going to be taken to court, through criminal lawsuits, filed by the economic professional associations".

SIF Oltenia has announced that it has brought two lawsuits against Banca Comercială Română: "- a request to bring an action for annulment of the Decision of the Extraordinary General Meeting of BCR of November 23rd, 2016, which is the object of the case no. 45844/3/2016; - a request for intervention which is aimed at rejecting the request for authorization of the merger approved by the Extraordinary General Shareholder Meeting of BCR of November 23rd, 2016, which is the object of case no. 44243/3/2016 which will have the first hearing on January 17th, 2017. Defendants: BCR, BCR Real Estate Management SRL (REM) and Bucharest Financial Plazza SRL (BFP)". The merger between BCR, REM and BFP represents a necessary operational simplification, given the fact that BCR is a majority shareholder in both entities, as its holdings are near 100%, and the two companies conduct their commercial activities through BCR, according to bank officials, who gave us the following statement: "The activities of the two subsidiaries will be internalized, and the merger will have a significant contribution to simplifying the structure of the BCR group and corporate governance". Law no. 31/1990 of companies allows shareholders who did not vote in favor of a spinoff or merger decision to exit the company and to ask the company to buy their shares, in which case their shares will be evaluated by an independent evaluator.  SIF Oltenia is the only one of the SIFs that has remained a shareholder of BCR, with a stake of 6.3%, after the other SIFs made their exit in 2011, following deals with Erste Bank, the majority shareholder of the bank. SIF Oltenia values its stake in BCR at 439.05 million lei, according to the report of September 30, 2016. In its 2016 strategy, SIF Oltenia has announced that it is still willing to negotiate with investors interested in its BCR stake, in order to get an attractive offer. "In the event such a negotiation is completed, we will summon the General Shareholder Meeting in order to put the deal up for approval - according to art. 241 (1) of the law 297/2004 - that stake exceeds 20% of the total assets, less receivables", SIF Oltenia wrote, and added: "We need to remind that BCR has ended 2015 very profitably, meaning that the chances of selling this stake in good circumstances have seen a good evolution".  Bucharest Financial Plazza SRL owns the BCR building of Calea Victoriei (the former Bancorex headquarters). The office building has been inaugurated in 1997, is 83 high, has 18 floors and a surface of approximately 31,000 sqm. 

European Union council president, Donald Tusk, called on the authorities in Poland to respect the constitution as a standoff between the opposition and the ruling party continued.  Polish opposition leaders called for days of anti-government protests and pledged to keep blocking parliament’s main hall after being accused of trying to seize power illegally by a government they say has violated the constitution.   Several thousand people protested in Warsaw and other cities after police broke up a blockade of the parliament building in Warsaw in the early hours.   “Following yesterday’s events in parliament and on the streets of Warsaw … I appeal to those who have real power for respect and consideration of the people, constitutional principles and morals,” Tusk told a news conference in Poland’s western city of Wrocław....Protesters had blocked all exits from the parliament on Friday after the opposition said PiS politicians illegally passed the budget for next year by moving the vote outside of the main chamber of parliament.  The protest marked the biggest political standoff in years in EU member Poland and the sharpest escalation of the conflict between the opposition and the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party since it came to power in October 2015.  The police attempted in the early hours of Saturday to remove protesters by grabbing them and pulling them aside, but stopped as new protesters arrived at the scene. The police also called on protesters blocking the parliament to disperse, saying on loudspeakers that they might otherwise use force

Forecasts made by investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Barclays Capital are only marginally better than flipping a coin, and if you hold on to their “hot picks” longer than a few months you will almost certainly lose money, according to new research. Intertrader, a spread betting firm, examined stock predictions from so-called (and highly paid) gurus at 16 investment banks, tracked them over the following 12 months and compared them to the returns on just putting your money into a savings account or a stock market index such as the S&P 500 on Wall Street. “Investment banks’ recommendations are only marginally better than a coin flip,” says Intertrader. “The banks we looked at only managed to predict the correct direction their hot picks would go 55% of the time. And that is actually the kindest we could be – holding their predictions for longer just meant worsening results.” Investors who bought and sold an investment bank recommendation within 30 days on average made a gain of just 0.8%. If they held it for 90 days, it moved to a loss of 1.48%, while over a year the average loss from buying an investment bank recommendation was 4.79%. “We found that if you put the money you would have invested in a 3% high-interest bank account instead, your returns would generally be higher,” says Intertrader, which has created a Gurudex index that analyses investment banks. The firm says the findings serve as a reminder of Warren Buffett’s words of advice on the value of stock market forecasters: “We have long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good. Even now, Charlie [Munger] and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grownups who behave in the market like children.”

The FTSE 100 index of Britain’s biggest stock market-listed companies has enjoyed its strongest year since 2009, jumping from 6,137 at the start of the year to touch nearly 7,000 this week. Wall Street’s S&P 500 has hit record highs, with British investors gaining even more in sterling terms because of the fall in the currency. This has meant that some of the biggest funds popular with small investors – such as M&G’s £6.3bn Global Dividend – have made gains of nearly 40% over the past year. But not everyone has shared in the party. The single biggest fund in the UK, Standard Life’s £26.3bn Global Absolute Return Strategies, has managed to lose money when almost everyone else has been coining it. The fund is down 3.3% over the past 12 months, compared with the 17% gain made by UK index-tracking funds over the same period. Star fund manager Neil Woodford has also had a poor year, making just 2.7% over the past 12 months for investors in his popular £9.2bn equity income fund.  The prize for the best performance of any fund in the UK goes to the little-known JFM Gold, which has given investors a return of 128% over the past year. Unfortunately, it’s only a £20m minnow, so we took a look at the big funds instead. M&G Global Dividend performed best, rising 39.4%, while Fundsmith Equity was up 28.2%. Both are heavily invested in Wall Street-listed stocks, which have rocketed in sterling terms. For example, Microsoft (a big holding in both funds) was trading at $54.80 at the start of the year and was $63.14 this week – a rise of 15%. But in sterling terms that translated into £37.27 at the beginning of the year, and £49 now – a rise of 31%. While the post-Brexit plunge in sterling will make holidays more expensive for everyone in 2017, it has turbo-charged returns for pension and Isa holders with investments in big US companies.

At least nine people have been killed and many more injured, according to German police, after a truck ploughed into a Christmas market in Berlin in what is believed to have been a deliberate attack. A vehicle, a large black Scania articulated lorry, ran into the market outside the landmark Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church on Monday evening. German police said one person was found dead in the lorry, having died of injuries sustained in the crash, while a suspect was arrested about 100 metres away from the scene in the Tiergarten.  A witness told the Guardian that the truck ploughed into the market at speed. “It was not an accident. The truck was going 40mph. It was in the middle of a square, there are main roads either side, [where it could have come from]. But it showed no sign of slowing down,” said Emma Rushton.  She said it crashed into a stall only a few feet from where she and her friend were standing. “We heard a massive bang. About eight to 10 feet in front of us was where the lorry ploughed through. It ploughed through the stall where we bought our mulled wine.

“It ploughed through people and the wooden huts, it tore the lights down. Everything went dark, it was black and there was screaming. It was awful,” she said.

Banca italiană "Monte dei Paschi di Siena" va scoate la vânzare noi acţiuni în perioada 19-22 decembrie, într-o ultimă încercare de a-şi majora capitalul în acest an cu 5 miliarde de euro şi a evita în acest fel solicitarea unui ajutor din partea statului, transmite Reuters. "Monte dei Paschi" a anunţat că oferta adresată investitorilor instituţionali, care reprezintă 65% din total, se va încheia joi. Oferta rezervată acţionarilor actuali şi persoanelor fizice va avea loc până miercuri.  În încercarea de a atrage fonduri, "Monte dei Paschi" a prelungit o ofertă de schimb voluntar de obligaţiuni cu acţiuni, adresată investitorilor care deţin obligaţiuni junior ale băncii în valoare de 2,1 miliarde de euro. Oferta are loc în intervalul 16-21 decembrie. Guvernul italian este pregătit să susţină a treia mare bancă din ţară, dacă planul de atragere de fonduri nu va funcţiona. Potrivit noilor reglementări adoptate de Uniunea Europeană după criza financiară, investitorii într-o bancă cu probleme trebuie să suporte primii pierderile, înainte ca guvernul să intervină cu fonduri publice. O sursă apropiată situaţiei a declarat vineri că salvarea de către stat a "Monte dei Paschi" implică mai întâi conversia obligatorie în acţiuni a unor obligaţiuni subordonate în valoare de 4,1 miliarde de euro. 

In the future, Romania may not receive funding from international organizations such as the IMF or the EU.  "There are no guarantees that the IMF, EU or other supra-national or international organizations will make available to Romania similar financing programs in the future. Both the current account and the budget deficit are rising. If these deficits are going to require the availability of future financing, Romania may pass additional measures that could hinder economic growth". NBR officials declined to comment on the statements included in the MedLife IPO prospectus. Last month, Lucian Croitoru, advisor to NBR governor Mugur Isărescu, warned that Romania was closer than one may think "either to an adjustment towards its potential, or towards recession", if the adjustments aren't made on time.  He wrote, on the NBR blog, that the monetary policy is more relaxes than intended, and the "relaxed fiscal policy has generated a fiscal impulse which stimulated the economy more than would have been implied by the negative amount of the GDP gap". This process whereby the VAT cuts and salary increases stimulate other countries' economies cannot last, and the inflation driven exclusively by demand will increase,  Mr. Croitoru said. He added: "In that context, the measures from 2016, to cut VAT by 4 percentage points together with the significant increase of wage expenditures, are not sustainable. They are putting pressures on the current account deficit and on inflation".  This year, NBR governor Mugur Isărescu has warned on several occasions against the fiscal relaxation measures passed together with salary increases in an electoral year. 

Reuters writes that the 2 billion Euros "investment" needs to be approved by the European Commission, which needs to check whether the transaction occurs at the market price or if it represents a state aid. Shortly after, a report appeared in Italian daily La Stampa, where it is state that the authorities in Rome have asked for a 15 billion Euros financial aid from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to prop up Italy's banking system. Shares of Italian banks rose significantly following the news, with Monte dei Paschi, being the best "performer", with a rise of about 10%. "No request for the ESM is being prepared", a spokesperson of the Italian treasury said, according to Financial Times.  With the resignation of the government led by Matteo Renzi, who has announced on his Twitter account that the budget law has been approved, Italy's "Aeneid" in the Eurozone enters a new stage and nobody knows when the country is going to turn that corner.  As for Greece's "Odyssey", Bloomberg asks whether the plan to cut the debt burden isn't too small and applied too late, reminding that the IMF sees the fiscal targets as unrealistic and the debt as far too big. Right now all we have to do is wait, even though we probably won't have to wait as many years as have passed since the aggravated phase of the sovereign debt in Europe, to find out whether Greece and Italy will "kick the bucket" once they "turn that corner". 

The International Monetary Fund, the third pillar of the creditors' Troika, has not yet accepted that and continues to ask for the application of a new debt reduction, so that it becomes bearable, as well as the continuation of the austerity programs. Even though the authorities in Athens have accepted the measures adopted in the Eurogroup meeting, once they got home they also "discovered" their true meaning. The measures for relieving the burden of the public debt will be applicable until 2060 and are subject to achieving the creation of a budget surplus of approximately 3.5% of the GDP over a ten year period, which will begin after the completion of the current bail-out program, in 2018.  Apparently no one knows why the new proposals of the European creditors are realistic. What will be extremely realistic and painful will be the new taxes provided in the draft budget for 2017. According to an article from French newspaper Le Monde, new taxes will be introduced for personal vehicles, landline phones, TVs, fuel, tobacco, coffee and beer.  Unfortunately, those taxes are missing one item, because there haven't been dance taxes introduced, as is happening in Brussels, where the local authorities have "rediscovered" a tax that was approved in the "50s and they send people undercover in bars and restaurants to make sure it is paid.  Of course, the "optimism" displayed by the European and the Greek authorities is completely out of place. "The agreement of the Eurogroup represents a chance for Greece to turn a corner", said Euclid Tsakalotos, finance minister in the government led by Alexis Tsipras, except his statement was made in spring this year, according to daily Kathimerini. Nobody expected miracles right away back then, but there are no signals that Greece is ready to turn a corner, just like nobody expects the new tax hikes and the newly introduced taxes to generate a virtuous circle of growth. As strange as it may seem, the notion of "virtuous circle of economic growth" actually exists in the discourse of the authorities in Athens. As always their optimism runs smack dab into the attitude of German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble. On the day of the referendum in Italy, Schäuble said, in an interview he gave Bild am Sonntag, that "Athens needs to finally apply the necessary reforms, or else it has no room in the Eurozone".

Russia’s Central Bank expects the crude glut on the global market to persist till 2017, according to the regulator’s report on monetary policy quoted by Tass. Oil price will decline to about $40 per barrel in 2016 and remain on this level in 2017-2019, the bank said. “The estimates of the supply and demand balance on the global crude market have not changed significantly, the surplus of oil supply is expected to persist till 2017. Taking this into account, the Bank of Russia has kept its base case forecast of Urals crude oil price by the end of 2016 at the level of $40 per barrel,” the report said.

A possible decision to freeze oil production by the exported countries will not have a significant effect on the demand/supply balance on the global oil market or oil price, the report said.  “The negotiations on freezing oil production among OPEC countries and some large exporters outside the organization are unlikely to have a lasting effect on market conditions. This would be possible only if the parties have agreed on direct reduction of production in comparison with current levels, but such an outcome is very unlikely. A more likely solution – setting production and exports at the levels close to the current ones – will not significantly affect the demand/supply balance on the global oil market,” the report said.  Earlier, Saudi Arabia and Russia’s energy ministers singed a joint statement aimed at stabilizing the crude market on the sidelines of the G20 Summit. The Ministers recognized the importance of maintaining the ongoing dialogue about current developments in oil and gas markets and indicated their mutual desire to further expand their bilateral relations in energy.  Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters that Russia and Saudi Arabia are going to discuss freezing oil production for 3 or 6 months, maybe more.  The 15th International Energy Forum (IEF15) will be held in Algiers on September 26-28, 2016. According to the media, oil exporter countries might discuss freezing of oil production. Venezuela, Ecuador and Kuwait were the initiators of the discussion.

OMV Petrom proposes its shareholders a dividend worth a minimum 30% for this year, says a release sent to Bucharest Stock Exchange. “OMV Petrom currently targets, subject to adverse developments in the external market, a proposed dividend from the 2016 net earnings of a minimum of 30% in the case it is fully covered by the Company’s free cash flows before dividends,” reads the release. ”The above should not be considered an amendment of the Company’s existing Dividend Policy, which will remain unchanged, but only a further detailing of the general principles with respect to 2016 only.” Starting the 2017 financial year and beyond, unless otherwise approved, the general principles under the Company’s existing Dividend Policy will remain unchanged and applicable, as follows: “OMV Petrom S.A. (the Company) is committed to deliver a competitive shareholder return through the business cycle, including paying an attractive dividend, subject always to maintaining a strong balance sheet that will enable the Company to finance its investment needs and to the shareholders’ approval.” OMV Petrom recorded a consolidated net profit of EUR 26 million in the second quarter of this year, down by 83% compared to the same period of 2015. The group’s consolidated sales declined by 20% in the three months ended June 31, 2016, to EUR 807 million.

 Once upon a time, there were five international audit, tax and audit consulting firms. Arthur Andersen disappeared in 2002, after it was convicted for the involvement in the Enron fraud.  Since then, there have been four giants on this market, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young and KPMG, and some of their biggest clients are financial institutions. Bloomberg and Financial Times recently wrote that PricewaterhouseCoopers has been sued for "not having detected a case of fraud that led to the collapse of a bank during the global financial crisis". According to FT, the lawsuit in the United States "could bring more audit firms in the line of fire". The biggest lawsuit against an audit firm, according to Financial Times, has been brought following the complaint filed by the company that is in charge of the liquidation of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker (TBW), a mortgage originator in the US, which has been in a long-lasting relationship with Colonial Bank din Alabama. During the period of the real estate bubble in the United States, which has led to the subprime lending crisis, TBW used to grant mortgage loans, and they have already been financed by Colonial Bank.  According to the article in FT, the company that manages what is left of the TBW assets are accusing PwC of "failing to spot the conspiracy of several billion dollars between the founder of TBW and the executive management of Colonial Bank". The documents submitted to the court show that PwC signed "clean" audit opinions between 2002 and 2008, and in 2009 Colonial Bank collapsed and "rose" up to the 6th position in the chart of the biggest defaults in the US. The cost for the FDIC (author's note": Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the institution for the guarantee of bank deposits in the US) was 4.2 billion dollars, according to Bloomberg estimates.