Massive Wave of Resignations (Addendum to Main Thread)

Gab1159 has done a remarkable job of providing information regarding, what appears on the surface, to be a mass wave of resignations from the financial sector.

Massive Wave of Resignation (Part V): The New Bandwagon!

I urge you to read his work before preceding further in this thread.

If true, a huge exodus of the top brass from the financial sector would mean.... well, I am not sure, but it sure seems important. Upon reading his work, there was always the nagging thought in the back of my mind that, "Maybe there aren't more resignations, it just seems that way because either (a) the media are reporting on them more frequently or (b) we are just paying more attention." This thought has been raised in each of his updates, but nobody seemed to be able to quantify what is a reasonable number of resignations.

In the most recent update, I posted a comment, wherein I used the EBSCOhost Business Premier database to search for articles that contained the world "Resign". You can see my chart in Gab1159's thread, but saying that the results were inconclusive is being generous.

Then I had an idea. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 requires that publicly traded companies must report to the SEC whenever a member of the Board or certain officers resign. Also, the SEC has a database named EDGAR that is open to the public. After a little research, I discovered that corporations must report said resignations on Form 8-K, Item 5.02. From there, it was a simple matter of searching only Form 8-Ks within a specific range of dates, and including the boolean search terms "Resigns" and "Resignation".

I felt this would at least offer us a baseline comparison to see if there is truly an uptick in resignations, or if it just appears that way. I think you will be interested in the results.



A few details I should point out. One, these results are not broken down by industrial sector, but encompass all "SICs" or Standard Industrial Classifications. Also, when dealing with such a large number of results, EDGAR gives an approximation on the number of filings. For example, in 2Q 2008 there may have been 1786 filings, but it gives me 1800 as the approximate result.

I must admit, when I started compiling the data, I did not believe I would find much. Possibly a slight upswing in the number of resignations, but I am simply blown away by the results.

I should point out for those reading, that you have to scroll the image to the right to see the whole thing.

Wow, so this is definitely NOT business as usual then!

Looks like Fulford has scared the crap out of these guys, or the Exodus is about to begin. almost 16000......That is amazing in itself!

I'm still not sure the implications of this. Looking back at numbers from the great depression though is interesting:

In all, 9,000 banks failed during the decade of the 30s. It's estimated that 4,000 banks failed during the one year of 1933 alone. By 1933, depositors saw $140 billion disappear through bank failures.

How many executive and bank jobs were lost back then with that number of banks dropping off?

Source

reply to post by LordOfArcadia


Good job s&f for you, It definitely doesn't seem like something that happens every year. I do hope it's the good guys clearing out the bad so we can hit the reset button on this thing and live in harmony for awhile before everything changes.

Makes you wonder WTH is going on?

Thanks for the info.

Originally posted by boncho
I'm still not sure the implications of this. Looking back at numbers from the great depression though is interesting:

In all, 9,000 banks failed during the decade of the 30s. It's estimated that 4,000 banks failed during the one year of 1933 alone. By 1933, depositors saw $140 billion disappear through bank failures.

How many executive and bank jobs were lost back then with that number of banks dropping off?

Source

edit on 13-3-2012 by boncho because: (no reason given)

This data does not show bank failures, but rather the number of resignations of top brass at publicly traded companies within the United States. I am a rather skeptical person. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, is a maxim that should be embraced more on ATS.

You can define extraordinary how ever you like, but for me, the numbers shown in the SEC database are extraordinary. In every quarter (the EDGAR database will only allow you to search back 4 years, hence 2Q 2008 is the first of the data), the number of filings does not deviate by more than 400, then suddenly in 4Q 2011 it jumps by 6000. The next quarter it is a full order of magnitude higher than the median.

I don't know what it means. As I stated in the OP, the entire reason I did the research is because I fully believed I would find no statistical evidence for something extraordinary. I am drawing no conclusions but merely providing the evidence for you to decide.

reply to post by LordOfArcadia


Thanks for you research and data.

I think if you start to add all the information that is provided on ATS it will provide you with a clear picture of what is going to happen soon.

There are 2 camps here, those that have seen/felt the coming truth and know, and those waiting for scientific proof that something earth changing is going to happen.

I just hope we as a race, can survive the upcoming change for the better.

Sirric

reply to post by LordOfArcadia


For a second I thought you were gonna rain on our parade with your data findings but as it turns out, you just brought more sunshine. Well done.

Anyone care to dumb it down for me? Like a lot?
I understand the threads on the resignations, and
I've read the OP, but Im not understanding what
the OP means...

OMG!!!

Thank you for compiling this data set. This is probably the most scary thing I have seen on ATS(not including the montauk monster)

For the people who think this is a purging of evil, you better think again!

Originally posted by Vandettas
Anyone care to dumb it down for me? Like a lot?
I understand the threads on the resignations, and
I've read the OP, but Im not understanding what
the OP means...

Like many on ATS, I had been reading the Massive Resignation threads with interest, but there was no objective measure if the resignations in question were actually increasing, decreasing or staying the same. I felt the information was important but lacked context. You know how when you learn a new word, you seem to see it everywhere? The resignations could have been like this. Since we (and the media) were paying more attention to resignations in the financial sector, it might just appear that there are more when in actuality, there are no more than in typical years. Another example would be shark attacks. Every few years, the media is lit up with reports of shark attacks, but almost always the increase in attacks is not statistically significant, it just there is more reporting on them.

So, I wanted to find an objective measure to determine if we are truly seeing an increase in resignations. The best avenue I could think of to explore this was the Securities and Exchange Commissions database named EDGAR. Because of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, all publicly traded companies must report resignations of members of their Board of Directors and certain high officers to the SEC. Specifically, they must report those resignations on Item 5.02 within Form 8-K. From there it was just a matter of plotting the number of Form 8-K's that contained the word "resignation" on Item 5.02 over each calendar quarter.

The results of that search is the chart I posted in the OP. Not only did we see a rise in filings, but a flood of them starting October 1 of last year.

While not perfect, the data clearly shows that media reports of resignations as documented by Gab1159 are not just an observational bias, but an actual trend. Further, the data from SEC shows that resignations are not just within the financial sector but are happening across all industries.

I hope this clears things up.

reply to post by LordOfArcadia

This data does not show bank failures, but rather the number of resignations of top brass at publicly traded companies within the United States. I am a rather skeptical person. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, is a maxim that should be embraced more on ATS.

I wasn't suggesting your data showed bank failures, just pointing out that the world already went through a great depression. And the data from the first one would be interesting to compare to the current economic climate.

Originally posted by boncho
reply to post by LordOfArcadia

This data does not show bank failures, but rather the number of resignations of top brass at publicly traded companies within the United States. I am a rather skeptical person. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, is a maxim that should be embraced more on ATS.

 

I wasn't suggesting your data showed bank failures, just pointing out that the world already went through a great depression. And the data from the first one would be interesting to compare to the current economic climate.

Unfortunately, that would be impossible. It was the first Great Depression that led to the federal regulations that now make it possible for us to see these resignations. I also would be curious to know if there was a massive exodus right before The Crash in 1929, but I am pretty sure that the data simply doesn't exist.

maybe it's just the obvious:

due to the drop of retirement stock value in 2008, then the resurgence of that value in 2011, the people that were set to retire for the last 4 years, are financially willing to do so.

The case of Goldman Sachs it appears to be The new boss just like the old boss.

I'm sometimes asked if I've noticed any change in Goldman, Sachs since the financial crash of 2008. I'd suggest that anyone who would ask that question simply check out this news item. It's not merely that Verschleiser appears to be a titanically entitled asshole of the Let-Them-Eat-Cake variety; it's also that this is a guy who was personally named in a number of major lawsuits involving exactly the sorts of tawdry behaviors that caused the crash -- like knowingly dumping "sack of #" mortgages on the market, or betting against your own clients after sticking them with millions' worth of defective products.

Guy Who Rented All 94 Rooms of Aspen Hotel for Party Scores Awesome New Goldman Job

Maybe its getting harder to find clean talent willing to go there

This will put some fuel on the topical fire

www.reuters.com...

Wow, OP. This is an impressive find. Now if we could only find a corresponding one for the rest of the world to say compare ratios by continent?

Good thread OP S&F. Nice to see total numbers with charts.

Has anyone attempted to contact some of these people that have departed and tried to ask them their reasoning for leaving? I would like to hear those comments, if they were to be available. Maybe it is those folks that can shed some more light on the subject.