Today here in Suzzanne Uhland Slideshare, we want to talk about real household names and how they found themselves so deep in trouble, they had to declare bankruptcy.

1. The Largest
Bankruptcies
In The United
States
By Suzzanne UhlandImage courtesy of Andrew Smith at Flickr.com

2. The last ten years of United States financial history
have been interesting to say the least. We have seen
giants fall and we have seen little companies rise to
heights they never even imagined. Nowadays
bankruptcy doesn’t declare the end of a company,
as a matter of fact, most of these companies we
have here actually made it ok and were bailed out in
some cases and thus saved from extinction. The point
is, no company is ever immune to financial woes, so
today here in Suzzanne Uhland Slideshare, we want
to talk about real household names and how they
found themselves so deep in trouble, they had to
declare bankruptcy; in some cases for good. If you
want to know more about bankruptcy and what we
can learn from it, check out our other great articles.

3. Pacific Gas & Electric Co
Pacific Gas and Electric is California’s largest
company and one of the casualties of the
state’s 2001 energy crisis. Due to new regulatory
laws placed by the state and record
temperatures that hit California that year, the
company had to resort to desperate measures in
order to meet the energy demand of its
customers. Unable to change prices to be able
to cover the losses, the company quickly had to
file for bankruptcy and remained so until 2004
when it was able to pay back some of the
money it had received. Customers had to pay
higher rates for years to cover the deficit.

4. Thornburg Mortgage
Thornburg Mortgage was the perfect example that the
housing market crisis in the United States was not affecting
only subprime lenders. This company was mainly focused on
high value mortgages to individuals with great credit. The fact
that home prices went down so much while defaults
continuing to rise was too much for the company and after a
fail attempt to be bailed out by private investors, it was
liquidated.
Chrysler
The 2008 recession was brutal on United States car
manufacturers and Chrysler was the first company to take the
hit. A government bailout was the first strategy put in place by
the president himself and with the help of the United
Automobile Workers and a much needed restructuring done
by Fiat, one of its shareholders, the company became
profitable again. After a few more years, Fiat needed up
buying out the rest of the company and merging it to itself.

5. CIT Group
This commercial lender was victim to the 2009 credit
crunch and ended up filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy.
While it was unlikely at the time that it would receive any
federally funded bailouts, the help came from some of its
bondholders including the Pacific Investment
Management Company amongst others.
Enron Corp.
Enron was an energy giant and its timely demised truly
rocked the United States financial world. The scandal
started when insiders blew the whistle on the devious
trading practices the company was involved with and as it
lost all of its value, thousands were laid off losing their jobs
and pensions. Enron is probably one of the best examples
of what fraud can do to a company. Many lives were
ruined and some of its top executives went to prison as a
result.

6. General Motors
Just a couple of months after Chrysler, one of the giants of
United States manufacture came crashing down as well,
receiving a deathly blow by the current financial crisis.
General Motors was already weakened by low sales for years,
so the crisis was too much to handle. The government bailout
was not very popular at the time, but years later it seem to
pay off as it was instrumental in saving over a million jobs and
also billions of dollars in tax revenue. Recently GM announced
it was profitable once again.
Washington Mutual Inc.
Washington Mutual’s was one of the most shocking
consequences of the 2008-2009 US financial crisis. Customers
panicked after the stock rapidly went down over a short
period of time and withdrew over 16 billion in over 10 days.
The bank was placed under control of the FDIC and its assets
were sold to JP Morgan. Washington Mutual’s fall is
considered the largest banking failure in history.

7. WorldCom Inc.
Another company whose failure can be attributed to fraud
and illegal dealings. WorldCom was once the second largest
long distance carrier in the United States but it filed for
bankruptcy only a month after a huge accounting scandal
made headlines. The company’s CEO, Bernard Ebbers
pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 25 years in
prison due to its involvement.
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
Lehman Brothers filed at the time what was considered the
largest bankruptcy case in United States history with at least
$639 billion in pre-filing assets. At the last minute it was
believed that perhaps Bank of America and Barclays would
end up buying the company and somehow avoid the
disaster, however they declined and without the much-
needed government bailout, everything came tumbling
down and the company was eventually liquidated.