Banks made and lost fortunes with speculative deals and sweetheart financing arrangements.

In one way, it is reminiscent of the highly speculative deals of the late 1980's.

Gibson Greeting claimed it had been lured into excessively speculative deals by "deception, cheating and fraud."

Supposedly, Brendo is the master-mind of large speculative deals on the stock markets as well as with various international funds.

Meanwhile, Brendo is also an active figure in speculative deals in Bulgaria.

He had lost quite a bit of money on various speculative deals, and without that life insurance policy he may have been forced to declare bankruptcy.

Without these innovations, speculative deals would be less attractive.

He said he thought such a speculative deal "would have a one in 10,000 chance of working out."

The report shows that during the boom years of the Texas oil economy Mr. Wright was an active investor, regularly using borrowed funds to enter speculative deals with his friends.

But the deals that were being done in the February-March part of this year, the very speculative deals, could not be done today.