Since the bankruptcy, NCFE is being run by the New York-based turnaround specialists, Alvarez & Marsal.

National century bust
By Rutberg, Sidney
Publication: The Secured Lender
Date: Saturday, March 1 2003
Subject: Financial services, Bankruptcy, Asset backed securities
Location: United States

IMAGE ILLUSTRATION 1
National Century Financial Enterprises was billed as the largest and fastest growing receivables finance firm in the healthcare industry. Its receivables-backed paper was rated AAA by Moody's. It signed up for top-of-the-line software technology to control its ever-expanding business so that 300 employees could handle $3 billion in assets.

Since its founding about a dozen years ago, it said it purchased $15 billion in healthcare receivables and, with the help of Credit Suisse First Boston, it securitized $6 billion of them. The company claimed to have earned a net profit in 2001 of $40 million on revenues of $300 million. Trustees of the NCFE securitizations were also top-drawer bankers, J. P. Morgan Chase and Bank One. In short, NCFE was the hottest healthcare financial services organization in the country.

But in late October 2002 Moody's pulled the triple-A rating on the NCFE-sponsored receivables-backed notes and on November 18, 2002, National Century Financial Enterprises filed a bankruptcy petition under Chapter 11 in Columbus, Ohio, with some $3.35 billion in these notes outstanding. About a week earlier, Lance K. Poulsen, one of the founders and chief executive, left the company. The NCFE bankruptcy left many of its clients without financing and several took the Chapter 11 route. Since the bankruptcy, NCFE is being run by the New York-based turnaround specialists, Alvarez & Marsal.