Bad Colorado Credit Home Loan

Keen to diversify, the insurers jumped onto the housing bandwagon, underwriting billions of dollars of private mortgage-backed securities. Now they face the prospect of huge claims from investors whose subprime-laced assets have soured.

Some hedge-fund managers have been giving warning for years that the insurers' mortgage-related risks would one day overwhelm their flimsy capital bases. Rating agencies are belatedly reaching the same conclusion. On December 19th Standard and Poor's slashed its rating of ACA Financial Guaranty Corporation, a small insurer, to junk grade. The industry's bigger fry have also been told to shore up their capital fast or face downgrades. If that happens, the credit ratings of bonds underwritten by the insurers will fall, driving down their value and further crimping the lending capacity of bondholding banks.

Inventive and dynamic risk-takers who changed the face of Britain

He took on a similar role at Vodafone, a company whose market value is equal, and depending on stock market vagaries, sometimes larger than the bank. Sir John took the nonexecutive role at Vodafone just in time to settle investors concerned that the company had lost its way – strategically, operationally and in terms of its executive leadership. Steely calm, one of Sir John’s most attractive characteristics, returned to Vodafone. The shares, which were in the doldrums for much of the early part of this decade, rose 30 per cent in 2007. He was knighted for services to banking in 1999. Sir John, who is married with three children, enjoys golf, skiing and reading biographies.

5 - Cynthia Carroll became both the first female and first non South African head of Anglo American on her appointment as chief executive of the mining conglomerate ten months ago.

Winning with women

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama won the women's vote 35 percent to 30 percent over U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, who finished third.