LandAmerica. From Sea to shining C-minus

Then on to BBB-minus, ending with an "F." Come on boys and girls, Fortune 500 companies are hard to come by and nice to have around. Richmond Times-Dispatch, today:

The chairman and chief executive of the bankrupt LandAmerica Financial Group Inc. is stepping down and the Henrico County-based company will sell its remaining business units, it said today.

...

What was once a top employer in the Richmond area and won "most admired" recognition from Fortune magazine for the past two years filed for Chapter 11 protection Nov. 26.

The Dirt Lawyer (a Chicago commercial real estate attorney who's worth keeping up with) gave us the name of the poison in November.

The skinny? LandAm apparently had a toxic exchange subsidiary that invested about $290 million in auction rate securities that may take forever to get rid of. And you need to access that money to faciliate the exchanges. In short? Liquidity crisis.

Yeah, something's all wet. Or maybe too cut and dry? Saying "liquidity crisis," as so many are, is like blaming the fork for your high cholesterol level. A quick Google offers us (via a Deloitte management guy no less) something [from 2006] that might be viewed as irony, what with all this gate-keepered "sudden news":

Fortune 500 blog project: #500 LandAmerica needs blogs

Oct 23, 2006 ... I love your explanation of why LandAmerica needs a blog (or multiple blogs!). I' ve said the same thing over and over of several blogless ...
it.toolbox.com/blogs/blogpotato/fortune-500-blog-project-500-landamerica-needs-blogs-12452 - 66k - Cached - Similar pages -

Come on Genworth, we're rooting for you!