Credit unions

SAN DIMAS, Calif. – WesCorp FCU reported Monday it will be unable to post its completed financial results for 2008 until later in the first quarter as its struggles to assess fair values for its $544 million of ten troubled collateralized debt obligations, better known as CDOs.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – NCUA officials said yesterday the agency is hoping that economy will improve in the coming months and improve the condition for corporate credit unions by the end of the year so the cost of the agency’s proposed bailout of the corporates could be less than the projected $4.7 billion.

WALL STREET – Rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded U.S. Central FCU again on Friday after NCUA announced a $1 billion bailout of the central bank for credit unions in the wake of a $1.2 billion loss for U.S. Central’s fourth quarter.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Widespread opposition was building last week among both healthy and troubled credit unions to NCUA’s $5 billion corporate credit union rescue plan announced earlier in the week.

ALEXANDRIA, Va.-NCUA was forced last week to infuse $1 billion into U.S. Central FCU after the central bank for credit unions reported a staggering $1.2-billion loss for its fourth quarter and $1-billion loss for 2008.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The average credit union will be hit by the huge bailout of the corporate system both coming and going--on its bottom line and on its net worth, according to projections by NCUA.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – With NCUA’s unprecedented bailout of U.S. Central FCU underway, the question being pondered in the credit union movement is will another corporate credit union require a government rescue to stay afloat?

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – NCUA is reviewing several options to resolve the spiraling losses among the corporate credit unions, including a takeover of the most troubled corporates or bringing as many as eight of the corporates under strict supervisory agreements, according to several sources.

WASHINGTON – CUNA has proposed a corporate aid plan to NCUA which would provide additional guarantees of corporate deposits beyond the current $250,000 per account provided by the National CU Share Insurance Fund.

ALEXANDRIA, Va.-Strapped for liquidity as paper losses grow on their asset-backed securities, the corporate credit unions have proposed a comprehensive restructuring of the system that would provide additional sources of funds, boost capital and position the corporates as providers of new services to natural-person credit unions.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – NCUA said the initial offering of the CU System Investment Program, aimed at pumping new liquidity into a handful of corporate credit unions, will result in $4.9 billion being provided to two corporates, U.S. Central FCU and WesCorp FCU, this Friday.

NORWALK, Conn. – The Financial Accounting Standards Board voted yesterday to change guidance for accounting for impaired securities so that preparers of financial statements may rely more on expected cash flows, rather than the current distressed market values, when assessing the fair market value for their investments.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A comprehensive rescue plan submitted by the corporate credit union network to NCUA proposes that the emergency lending fund known as the Central Liquidity Facility be used to pump as much as $15 billion of new funds into the corporates or even be utilized to move billions of dollars of distressed assets off the corporates’s books.

NORWALK, Conn. – The Financial Accounting Standards Board is expected to offer some relief today to corporate credit unions and banks with large holdings of impaired securities by changing some of the rules for fair value, also known as mark-to-market accounting.

WASHINGTON – Rejecting a bid by corporate credit unions and other financial institutions, the Securities and Exchange Commission last week recommended against suspending fair value accounting, which is causing those institutions to report billions of dollars in unrealized losses on underwater assets.

DALLAS – Unrealized losses on the vast securities portfolios of corporate credit unions continue to grow with two more corporates, Southwest Corporate FCU and Corporate One FCU, reporting additional mark-downs for November, and just as important, each deciding to realize some of the growing losses on their books.

WALL STREET – Growing losses within the corporate network caused Moody’s Investors Service to cut its ratings yesterday on several of the biggest corporate credit unions, including U.S. Central FCU and WesCorp FCU.

WARRENVILLE, Ill. – Corporate credit unions are reporting hundreds of millions of new losses on their books, the direct result of last month’s decision by the Treasury Department to abandon its plans to buy illiquid assets from financial institutions.