Could you imagine even asking these guys to hold the door for you?

As you may or may not be aware of, Bank of America Corporation (Bank of America or BofA) is the second largest bank holding company in the United States with over $2.2 trillion dollars in assets and while the company’s name may be synonymous with American banking it’s important to look back to the company’s roots. Dating back to 1904 the bank’s initial incarnation was founded by Amadeo Gianni as the Bank of Italy in San Francisco, by 1922 they founded Bank of America and Italy by purchasing Banca dell’Italia Meridonale.

By 1927 the Bank of Italy branches were consolidated with Liberty Bank of America resulting in the Bank of Italy National Trust & Savings Assocation. By 1928 Gianni ended up growing the business until the passage of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, then BankAmerica Corporation was formed for the purpose of owning Bank of America and hence, something resembling the current Bank of America Corporation.

So given the current restructuring and deleveraging of the Italian economy it may be sensible to see that capital consolidation has led to a possible foreign bank holding company becoming the lender of choice for small business owners in Italy right? Wrong.

What about asking for a favor you're probably going regret?

The exact opposite has happened, organized crime ended up tightening its grip on the Italian economy. And when we say organized crime, we’re talking about crime groups like the actual Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, and the Naples Camorra.

Now generating over $178 billion dollars in profits and $65 billion dollars of liquidity the mafia has been lending out money to thousands of small businesses all over Italy. Financially squeezing these companies dry by operating as corporate loan sharks.

The typical people borrowing money (i.e. being extorted) are middle-aged shopkeepers and small businessmen who are struggling to keep their family businesses afloat. Grocers, clothing store owners, florists, and butchers are the typical victims while the mafia relies on extremely high interest rates and thuggish recovery methods to fuel their growing profits. It’s literally become a national crisis on the Italian peninsula which is having a macroeconomic affect across the whole country’s economy and thanks to the fact that 56% of the Italian banks have tightened their lending requirements in the past three months we’re probably not going to see a change anytime soon.

One of our many wallpapers, feel free to download as many as you want by visiting our wallpaper page.

Are you ready to rock your desktop’s world? Maybe get a regal horse design for your smartphone’s background?

Here’s your chance. We’ve decided to finally upload our actual internal wallpapers that our own employees use. Enjoy!

http://kaneinsurance.net/wallpapers/

Principal Financial Group defined contribution plans are now available to Edward Jones clients.

Thanks to this finalized agreement Principal Financial defined contribution plans are now available to be sold by Edward Jones financial advisors.

More about Principal Financial Group
Also known as The Principal, Principal Financial Group is a NYSE pubically traded muti-line insurance company that has over 15,000 employees serving the banking, life insurance, mutual fund, and retirement planning sectors. Nippon Life Insurance currently owns roughly 7% of the insurance giant. To learn more about The Principal please click here to read our profile on the insurer.

Mutual of Omaha makes a deal with Securites America Inc.

Chuck Lombardo, President and CEO of Retirement Marketing Solutions Inc. (A Mutual of Omaha wholly owned subsidiary) has stated that this deal is part of Mutual of Omaha’s plan to double its retirement plan distribution as well as its advisor support programs to sales producers affiliated with any broker-deals in the United States of America.

More about Mutual of Omaha
Founded in 1909 as the Mutual Benefit Health and Accident Association, Mutual of Omaha is a mutual insurance company that provides financial products in the following arenas: Life insurance, medicare supplement insurance, annuities, retirement plans, long-term care insurance, as well as accidental death and dismemberment insurance. For a more detailed profile of the insurance company please view our profile on the company here.

Securian Financial Group acquires American Modern Life Insurance Company

According to Securian the purchase is going to increase the size of its credit protection business by 25% where it will integrate the latest acquisition into its operation by July 1, 2012. Until the transition period is complete they will expect American Modern Life Insurance Company to provide help fulfilling the transition.

More about Securian Financial Group
Securian Financial Group is a mutual financial services corporation headquartered in St Paul, Minnesota which was founded in 1880 by Russell Dorr. The company manages over $32 billion in assets has over $700 billion dollars of life insurance policies in-force.

The SEC is alleging that the CEO Prado, CFO David Marten, and the general counsel Scott Paden misled their shareholders by negligently refusing to disclose that the company was taking large amounts of risk. More specifically the SEC stated that Life Partners Inc was “systematically and materially underestimating the life expectancy estimates held that it used to price transactions.”

Life Partner Holdings Inc. Logo

The three men allegedly overvalued the assets on the books to create the appearance of consistent flow of income from the life settlement transactions.

As one of the world’s largest and more reputable companies in the American secondary market for life insurance (also known as “life settlements”) the company has completed nearly 140,000 transactions for nearly 30,000 institutions and individuals tied to purchasing over 6,400 policies worth $3 billion dollars in face value.

The SEC is alleging that Life Partner Holdings underestimated the life expectancy of the policyholders and Paden and Pardo sold a combined $1.3 million dollars of their company stock at inflated prices.

In response to these allegations the Chairman of Life Partner Holdings emailed out the following statement:

“It is very disappointing that the SEC has chosen to pursue litigation over issues that we believe have no merit and financial presentation issues that we do not believe are material. We have always done our best to deliver value to our shareholders and to run an honest and transparent company. We intend to vigorously defend ourselves against these meritless claims.”

It should be noted that the lawsuit brought forth by the SEC is targeting Life Partners Holdings Inc and the specific executives, yet no claims have been filed against the company’s operating subsidiary: Life Partners Inc. Meaning this should not effect any clients or transactions, yet the company stock, LPHI, was down over 18% shortly after the SEC announced the lawsuit.

Please feel free to come back soon!