Five of ten biggest ever bankruptices in current crisis

NEW YORK: With General Motors's fall into bankruptcy on Monday, the current economic crisis has accounted for five out of the ten biggest ever bankruptcies in the US.

Making the current crisis even worse, the five new entrants to this dubious league account for more than 80 per cent of the top ten in terms of the asset size of the bankrupt companies.

The five bankruptcies in the current economic crisis together account for assets worth about 1.2 trillion dollars, against about 250 billion dollars of the remaining five.

General Motors itself has become the fourth biggest ever bankruptcy candidate in the US, next only to those of Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual and WorldCom.

Lehman Brothers and WaMu also went belly-up in the current economic crisis itself, while that of once iconic telecom brand WorldCom happened in 2002.

Another auto giant Chrysler fell into bankruptcy about a month ago and is the seventh biggest so far in the US history. Energy giant Enron in 2001 and insurance and finance major Conseco in 2002 are the fifth and sixth biggest ever bankruptcies respectively so far.

Others in top-ten bankruptcy list include residential mortgage lender Thornburg Mortgage Inc (eigth), electricity and natural gas firm Pacific Gas and Electric Company (ninth) and petroleum major Texaco (tenth).

Among these, Lehman, WaMu, GM, Chrysler and Thornburg fell victims to the current economic crisis, while others happened in late 80s or early in this decade.

Lehman became the first major victim of the current crisis when it went bankrupt on September 15, 2008 with assets worth 691 billion dollars and debt of 613 billion dollars. It was soon followed by the country's largest savings and loan holding company WaMu, which went bankrupt on September 26, 2008 and its 327-bollion dollar assets were immediately sold to JPMorgan Chase for mere 1.9 billion dollar.

The auto sector started falling apart a few months later and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy on April 30, 2009, with assets worth 39.3 billion dollar. The very next day, Thornburg Mortgage filed for bankruptcy with assets of 36.5 billion dollar.

GM has become the latest to join the list as fourth biggest bankruptcy candidate with its assets worth 91 billion dollar.

The third biggest bankruptcy candidate so far, WorldCom had gone belly up in July 2002 with 107 billion dollar assets. Besides, Enron had gone bankrupt in December 2001 with 63.4 billion dollars in assets, while Conseco filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2002 with assets worth 65.5 billion dollars.