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One Reason the SEC Can’t Regulate Wall Street

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Regulators, particularly those within the SEC, took a lot of criticism for their inability to prevent the financial crisis in 2008. And rightly so. The complex CDOs and credit default swaps were all poorly regulated and this whole cottage industry that arose to, in essence, gamble on the real estate industry brought the global economy to the brink.

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So feel free to continue piling on the regulators.
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I’m sure I will.

But sometimes you see something that adds a little more perspective.

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And today that comes from Forbes, which published the well-titled piece “10 Wall Street Expenses That Make The SEC’s Budget Look Pathetic” in response to the ongoing Washington debate over the size of SEC’s budget. (President Obama wants to raise it from the current $1.1 billion to $1.4 billion while House Republicans want to chop $25 million off the current total, according to Forbes.)

It isn’t apples-to-apples, but their list makes you wonder how always-behind-the-times-anyway bureaucrats could ever hope to compete with the savvy titans of the Street. The most glaring comes in looking at the $4 billion JPMorgan maintains for its litigation reserves alone. As Forbes writer Halah Touryalai puts it, “Yes — that means the money JPM is saving so it can fight or settle lawsuits is 4x the size of what the SEC has to regulate the entire securities industry.”

Kind of like taking a spork to a gun fight.

America’s Most Reputable Companies

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As a business asset, reputation is often overlooked in favor of the more easily quantified components of a typical balance sheet. But reputation may be the most important factor in determining whether or not a consumer chooses a particular product or service. And although it may be difficult to put a number on reputation, it’s not impossible, as the latest survey by the Reputation Institute indicates.

As reported in Forbes, according to the survey of more than 30,000 consumers, Amazon.com is the most reputable large companies in the United States.

“Amazon is the most reputable company in the U.S. in 2011 because consumers believe that it stands for more than what it sells,” says Anthony Johndrow, managing partner at Reputation Institute. “Its enterprise-wide story engages consumers in more than just delivering innovative products and services, a trustworthy and ethical customer experience or strong financial performance. The whole really is greater than the sum of the parts with Amazon, and this holistic perception creates a meaningful connection between Amazon and consumers, resulting in an excellent reputation score.”

The Reputation Institute gauged reputation by measuring how people felt about 150 of the largest U.S. companies in the areas of trust, esteem, admiration and good feeling. From there they were able to create a “RepTrakPulse” score that went from 0 (the worst) to 100 (the best). Amazon’s 82.7 score was 1.3 points higher than the second place company Kraft Foods. The next four companies  on the list–Johnson & Johnson, 3M, Kellogg’s and UPS–were the only other companies to score in the 80s.

On the other end of the spectrum, unsurprisingly, financial firms received some of the lowest scores. Freddie Mac’s 29.47 score put it at the bottom of the list with AIG, Fannie Mae, Goldman Sachs and Halliburton rounding out the bottom five. The highest charting insurer was State Farm, which was 48 on the list with a score of 72.7.

The following are the top 10 most reputable U.S. companies (the entire list can be found at the end of the Forbes article):

[TABLE=9]

The Forbes Risk List: One Honor You Don’t Want

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In May, Forbes put together “The Risk List” of fifty companies “flashing danger signs.” Most of the time, people like to be on lists. But this is one where no one covets inclusion and is basically the exact opposite of Forbes‘ Most Trustworthy Companies list.

Among the unfortunate are household brands like Rite Aid, Sanyo, Borders, the MGM Mirage and US Airways. Fast Company offers a little more perspective on those who made the list:

For most companies, the chart give a pretty rough and dirty approximation–basically looking at revenues against one-time massive expenses such as capital expansion. For example, you’ll see MGM Mirage’s massive spending gamble on CityCenter holding court in the Very Aggressive category. Sometimes, there are wildcards like insurance claims or court cases–expect to see BP blowing up here next year. But usually it’s just big companies spending money they didn’t earn this year, and thus taking on new debt.

For the handful of retailers on this list, risk makes sense; they could gain big when the economy improves. But for some of the other industries it’s harder to understand–so many hospitality corporations are represented it makes you wonder if hotels can indeed absorb all that financial stress.

Interesting stuff.

The more immediate, breaking news here, however, is that a media outlet called Meet the Boss TV has produced a pretty cool infographic that shows how these companies stack up. With just a quick glance, you can see how the 30 riskiest companies relate in terms of revenue and how aggressive they are with accounting and governance.

Click through here to see the full-size version.

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America’s Most Trustworthy Companies

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For the fourth straight year, Forbes has unveiled its list of America’s 100 Most Trustworthy Companies and, as Reactions pointed out, three property/casualty insurers not only made the cut, but received perfect scores: Montpelier Re, Greenlight Capital and National Interstate.

The other insurance firms in the top 100 were: Chubb, Arch, Renaissance Re, Transatlantic, FPIC, Safety Insurance Group, EMC and Navigators. Here is the full list, which includes Bed, Bath & Beyond, Hess and Lowe’s in the “large cap” division.

For the rankings, Forbes partners with Audit Integrity, and in the write up, they were quick to kick another insurance giant while it is down in an attempt to show how their past predictions have proven true.

Audit Integrity looks beyond the raw data on companies’ income statements and balance sheets to assess the true quality of corporate accounting and management practices. As early as August 2005, Audit Integrity’s proprietary rating system signaled potential problems at Lehman Brothers. In December of 2005 it gave American International Group a significant downgrade.

Awww. Poor AIG. Always getting made fun of for helping tank the economy.

They also note some of the rationale behind the list, which is directly in line with a core tenant of risk mitigation: avoid negative events.

Audit Integrity’s evaluation penalizes companies for unusual or excessive executive compensation, high levels of management turnover, substantial insider trading relative to their corporate peers or high levels of short-term executive compensation, which encourages management to focus on short-term results. Good housekeeping practices leave companies better prepared to handle an economic downturn, especially one as severe as right now. The absence of negative events counts, as much as the existence of positive events, in getting businesses on the list. “These companies have made it through our screening process and shown consistent high quality,” Zwingli says. “Healthy individuals are often that way because they don’t engage in unhealthy behavior. These companies are the same way.”

What’s the saying?

“All news is good news.”

Yeah, I don’t think that is true for companies. And apparently, neither do Audit Integrity and Forbes.

In related news, Greenwich Associates recently released its “Excellence Awards for Middle Market Insurance Brokerage.”