Investing

It’s Finally Over For Ambac (ABK), Shares Drop To $.62

Ambac (ABK) may be the last of the big financial firm flameouts coming out of the credit crisis. The only probable exceptions are Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE), which the government may take through token bankruptcies to cleanse themselves…

By Douglas A. McIntyre
Published March 25, 2010, 9:19am ET · 1 min read

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Ambac (ABK) may be the last of the big financial firm flameouts coming out of the credit crisis. The only probable exceptions are Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE), which the government may take through token bankruptcies to cleanse themselves of their equity holders and unsecured debt holders.

Ambac said today that it faces nearly impossible capital difficulties after the municipal bond firm passed control of $35 billion worth of troubled assets to a Wisconsin regulator – the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance of the State of Wisconsin.

Ambac’s board promptly issued a statement where it said part of the company is still solvent, but that may mean very little.

“The Board of Directors of Ambac Assurance UK Limited (“AUK”) today issued the following comments on the implications for AUK of the rehabilitation of the segregated account of AUK’s parent, Ambac Assurance Corporation (“AAC”), by the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance (“OCI”) of the State of Wisconsin, USA: AUK is a subsidiary of AAC and is a separate legal entity. AUK is regulated by the UK Financial Services Authority and is not in rehabilitation or any other insolvency proceedings.”

With a large part of its asset base gone, it does not have enough balance sheet buoyancy to remain afloat.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

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Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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