GE shares drop after Madoff whistleblower Harry Markopolos calls it a 'bigger fraud than Enron'

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General Electric shares fell Thursday after Madoff whistleblower Harry Markopolos targeted the conglomerate in a new report, saying it has allegedly been hiding the extent of its problems in fraudulent financial statements.

A website has been set up to disseminate the report, www.GEfraud.com, where Markopolos calls it “a bigger fraud than Enron.” The financial investigator, who was probing GE for an unidentified hedge fund, writes that after more than a year of research he has discovered “an Enronesque business approach that has left GE on the verge of insolvency.”

“My team has spent the past 7 months analyzing GE’s accounting and we believe the $38 Billion in fraud we’ve come across is merely the tip of the iceberg,” Markopolos said in the 175-page report. Markopolos alleges that GE has a “long history” of accounting fraud, dating back to as early as 1995, when it was run by Jack Welch. 

Markopolos’s case centers around GE’s long-term care insurance unit, which the company had to boost reserves for by $15 billion last year. By examining the filings of GE’s counterparties in this business, he alleges that GE is hiding massive losses that will only increase as policy-holders grow older. He claims that GE has filed false statements to regulators on the unit, or eight other insurance regulators have done so. Separately, he goes on to find issues with GE’s accounting on its oil and gas unit Baker Hughes.

GE confirmed the existence of the report in a statement to CNBC, but said it has not seen it. The website asks for users to submit a name and email to receive the full report.

“We have never met, spoken to or had contact with this person. While we can’t comment on the detailed content of a report that we haven’t seen, the allegations we have heard are entirely false and misleading,” the statement said.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the missive and said that it has viewed it, sending GE shares lower. The stock was down by as much as 4% Thursday.

Markopolos is a Boston-based accounting expert who gained notoriety after pointing out irregularities with Madoff’s investment strategy, and how it was impossible to generate the returns the fraudster claimed years before the Ponzi scheme was exposed. He was largely ignored at the time. More recently, Markopolos helped uncover a foreign currency trading scandal at a group of banks.

The Markopolos group looking into GE includes forensic accounting veteran John McPherson, co-founder of MMS Advisors, which specializes in the insurance industry.

“GE has been running a decades long accounting fraud by only providing top line revenue and bottom line profits for its business units and getting away with leaving out cost of goods sold, SG&A, R&D and corporate overhead allocations,” the report said.

GE’s market value as of Wednesday’s close was $78.8 billion. Markopolos told the paper the insurance unit would need to raise reserves by more than $18.5 billion.

Here are the main points Markopolos makes on the parts of the website, which are now available to read online:

• “This is my accounting fraud team’s ninth insurance fraud case in the past nine years and it’s the biggest, bigger than Enron and WorldCom combined. In fact, GE’s $38 Billion in accounting fraud amounts to over 40% of GE’s market capitalization, making it far more serious than either the Enron or WorldCom accounting frauds.”
• “GE utilizes many of the same accounting tricks as Enron did, so much so that we’ve taken to calling this the GEnron case.”
• “Of the $29 Billion in new LTC reserves that GE needs, $18.5 Billion requires cash immediately while the remaining $10.5 Billion is a non-cash GAAP charge which accounting rules require to be taken no later than 1QTR 2021. These impending losses will destroy GE’s balance sheet, debt ratios and likely also violate debt covenants.”
• “When you benchmark GE to a responsible insurance carrier using going concern accounting such as Prudential (PRU), GE needs $18.5 Billion in additional reserves in order to be able to pay claims. We compare GE’s LTC policies to Prudential and Unum, two insurers with similar pre-mid-2000’s vintage LTC policies, but whose policies have much lower risk characteristics than GE’s. Prudential’s 2018 loss ratio on similar policies was 185% and they’re reserving $113,455 per policy while GE’s loss ratios are several times higher and they’re only reserving $79,000 per policy. Just to match Prudential’s level of reserves would require an immediate $9.5 Billion increase in reserves.”
• “GE would change its reporting formats every 2-4 years to prevent analysts from being able to make comparisons across time horizons! In other words, GE went out of its way to make it impossible to analyze the performance of their business units.
• “Why would a company do that? We could only think of two reasons: 1) to conceal accounting fraud or 2) because they’re so incompetent they’re not capable of keeping proper books and records. I’m not sure which reason is worse because both are bad and each is a path to bankruptcy.”
• “in accounting fraud GE’s debt to equity ratio goes from the 3:1 ratio it reported at the end of the 2nd quarter 2019 to a woefully deficient 17:1.” 

GE is already under investigation by the Justice Department and SEC for potential accounting practices. That includes a $22 billion charge the company took in the third quarter related to acquisitions made in its power business. 

The struggling industrial conglomerate abruptly removed its former CEO and chairman John Flannery last year after only a year on the job, and installed former Danaher CEO Lawrence Culp as his successor.

Flannery had been appointed in August 2017, taking the reins from Jeff Immelt as GE’s stock steadily eroded. The company’s value had continued set new lows as investors remain unconvinced by Flannery’s turnaround vision. Last June, GE was kicked out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It had been the longest-serving component of the blue chip index at 111 years.

Long-term care policies typically pay for end of life costs, like nursing homes or assisted living. It’s known as one of the more costly and unpredictable parts of the insurance market — especially as the average American lifespan rises. Last January, GE reported a $6.2 billion charge based on liabilities in its long-term care business, which is run by the company’s financial services unit, GE Capital. To make up for the costs, GE Capital said it needed to set aside $15 billion to hold against potential losses, and stopped paying a dividend to its parent company for the “foreseeable future.”

The costs prompted an investor lawsuit and prompted an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which GE has said it is cooperating with. 

GE pointed out that Markopolos gave an unnamed hedge fund he is working with access to the report ahead of time. Markopolos said he has given the report to securities regulators and that certain information he has uncovered has been given to law enforcement only, and is not in the public report.

A disclaimer on the website read: “Prior to the initial distribution of this Report on August 15, 2019, the Company entered into an agreement with a third-party entity to review an advanced copy of the Report in exchange for later-provided compensation. That compensation is based on a percentage of the profits resulting from the third-party entity’s positions in the securities, derivatives, and other financial instruments of, and/or relating to, General Electric Company (“GE”) (NYSE: GE). Those positions taken by the third-party entity are designed to generate profits should the price of GE securities decrease.”

GE reported better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and gave an upbeat outlook for its industrial cash flow — a key metric watched by investors. GE also announced that long-time executive Jamie Miller, who has been with GE since 2008, was stepping down. She was appointed as CFO in 2017 under Flannery.

GE said its power unit is showing “signs of stabilization” but the segment’s orders remained sluggish, with $4.9 billion in booked orders, representing a drop of 22% from a year earlier. Revenue fell by 25% year over year in the second quarter, while power barely reported a profit of $100 million.

Here is the full GE statement to CNBC:

Read the entire report here.