“Do we know the collateral? Are we experienced in valuing the collateral? Do we know the industry?” responds Jim Hogan when asked how GE Capital qualifies restructuring opportunities.

When it comes to distressed businesses, GE Capital calls them as it sees them – restructurings, that is. In fact, GE Capital even applies the word to its own practice area known as GE Capital, Restructuring Finance.

“In every bank, there’s someone tasked with going after restructurings, but we decided to build a group that does nothing but that,” explains Hogan, who today is helping lead the company’s restructuring practice as a senior managing director at GE Capital.

“For every restructuring that’s due to the economy, there are three or four that are due to competitive or management reasons,” says Hogan. more

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has so far shuttered more than 149 banks in 2010 – a number that seems to counter the notion that the nation’s banks have rapidly recovered from the financial crisis.

Of course, most of the failed banking institutions were smaller lenders or community banks that have had little to do with the synthetic securities that triggered the financial crisis. Nevertheless, they are now struggling as local real estate loans sour.

So as the nation’s biggest banks enjoy the fruits of recovery, hundreds of small lenders remain at risk. It’s a situation that is now drawing big and small banks together as smaller lenders – often too cash-strapped to invest in their own infrastructure – turn to larger banks to provide so-called “white label” services to their corporate clients. more

It was the biggest IPO in U.S. history — raising $20.1 billion in common and preferred shares of stock — and it was to many a financial milestone capable of revealing to the world GM’s renewed financial clout.

Not so fast. When qualifying financial milestones, we are reminded that there exists a stark distinction between those achieved by a company’s financial inner workings and those achieved by the hubris of Wall Street. For me, there’s little question that GM’s milestone emanated from the latter.

To date, the renewal of GM’s finance function remains very much a work-in-progress. GM’s current CFO, Chris Liddell, arrived from Microsoft only a year ago, and in the best latter-day GM tradition he’s already on his second boss (Dan Akerson was named CEO this past September). This is not to say that Liddell isn’t up to the task of restoring the automaker’s faltering finance function. However, GM will need to demonstrate a commitment to leadership that is not confined to the CEO suite. more

When the U.S. House of Representatives returns after Thanksgiving, affairs in Washington are expected to be brought to full boil as President Obama and House Democrats attempt to extend some of the Bush tax cuts now due to expire at the end of December.

Obama’s proposal would extend most of the reductions, but not, however, those for individuals making more than $200,000 and families making more than $250,000.

Among the more notable business minds helping to amplify the debate is billionaire Warren Buffett, who told an interviewer this week: “I think that people at the high end — people like myself — should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it.”

While any tax increase is bound to stir emotions among billionaires and non-billionaires alike, it’s clear that the controversy surrounding the Obama proposal has been amplified due to the notion that an income scale determines who is being taxed. And it’s just such a scale that is now heating up the already blazing corporate healthcare arena. However, this time the scale is being applied by private industry. more