title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf ultimately returned to Oxford, completing her Doctor of Philosophy degree in English literature in 2015. Her thesis, supervised by Stefano Evangelista of Trinity College, formed the basis for her 2019 book "Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love".


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf was involved in Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election bid, brainstorming with the president's team about ways to reach female voters. Hired by Dick Morris, she wanted Morris to promote Clinton as "The Good Father", and a protector of "the American house". She met with him every few weeks for nearly a year, Morris wrote in his book about the campaign, "Behind the Oval Office". Wolf managed to "persuade me to pursue school uniforms, tax breaks for adoption, simpler cross-racial adoption laws and more workplace flexibility." The advice she gave was without payment, Morris said in November 1999, as Wolf was fearful the knowledge of her involvement in the campaign might have negative consequences for Clinton.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: During Al Gore's bid for the presidency in the 2000 election, Wolf was hired to work as a consultant. Wolf's ideas and participation in the Gore campaign generated considerable media coverage. According to a report by Michael Duffy and Karen Tumulty in "Time", Wolf was paid a salary of $15,000 (by November 1999, $5,000) per month "in exchange for advice on everything from how to win the women's vote to shirt-and-tie combinations." Wolf's direct involvement in the "Time" article was unclear; she declined to be interviewed on the record.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In an interview with Melinda Henneberger in "The New York Times", Wolf said she had been appointed in January 1999 and denied having advised Gore on his wardrobe. Wolf said she had mentioned the term "alpha male" only once in passing and that "[it] was just a truism, something the pundits had been saying for months, that the vice president is in a supportive role and the President is in an initiatory role…I used those terms as shorthand in talking about the difference in their job descriptions". Wolf told Katharine Viner of "The Guardian" in 2001: "I believe his agenda for women was a really historic agenda. I was honoured to bring the concerns of women to Gore's table, I'm sorry that he didn't win and the controversy was worth it for me." She told Viner the men in Gore's campaign, at the equivalent level, were paid more than she was.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In 1991, Wolf gained international attention as a spokeswoman of third-wave feminism from the publication of her first book "The Beauty Myth", an international bestseller. It was named "one of the seventy most influential books of the twentieth century" by "The New York Times". She argues that "beauty" as a normative value is entirely socially constructed, and that the patriarchy determines the content of that construction with the objective of maintaining women's subjugation.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf posits the idea of an "iron-maiden", an intrinsically unattainable standard that is then used to punish women physically and psychologically for their failure to achieve and conform to it. Wolf criticized the fashion and beauty industries as exploitative of women, but added that the beauty myth extended into all areas of human functioning. Wolf writes that women should have "the choice to do whatever we want with our faces and bodies without being punished by an ideology that is using attitudes, economic pressure, and even legal judgments regarding women's appearance to undermine us psychologically and politically". Wolf argues that women were under assault by the "beauty myth" in five areas: work, religion, sex, violence, and hunger. Ultimately, Wolf argues for a relaxation of normative standards of beauty. In her introduction, Wolf positioned her argument against the concerns of second-wave feminists and offered the following analysis:


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Christina Hoff Sommers criticized Wolf for publishing the estimate that 150,000 women were dying every year from anorexia. Sommers said she traced the source to the American Anorexia and Bulimia Association, who stated that they were misquoted; the figure refers to sufferers, not fatalities. Wolf's citation came from a book by Brumberg, who referred to an American Anorexia and Bulimia Association newsletter and misquoted the newsletter. Wolf accepted the error and changed it in future editions. Sommers gave an estimate for the number of fatalities in 1990 as 100–400. The annual anorexia casualties in the US were estimated to be around 50 to 60 per year in the mid-1990s. In 1995, for an article in "The Independent on Sunday", British journalist Joan Smith recalled asking Wolf to explain her unsourced assertion in "The Beauty Myth" that the UK "has 3.5 million anorexics or bulimics (95 per cent of them female), with 6,000 new cases yearly". Wolf replied, according to Smith, that she had calculated the statistics from patients with eating disorders at one clinic.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Caspar Schoemaker of the Netherlands Trimbos Institute published a paper in the academic journal "Eating Disorders" demonstrating that of the 23 statistics cited by Wolf in "Beauty Myth", 18 were incorrect, with Wolf citing numbers that average out to 8 times the number in the source she was citing.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Second-wave feminist Germaine Greer wrote that "The Beauty Myth" was "the most important feminist publication since "The Female Eunuch"" (Greer's own work), and Gloria Steinem wrote, ""The Beauty Myth" is a smart, angry, insightful book, and a clarion call to freedom. Every woman should read it." British novelist Fay Weldon called the book "essential reading for the New Woman". Betty Friedan wrote in "Allure" magazine that ""The Beauty Myth" and the controversy it is eliciting could be a hopeful sign of a new surge of feminist consciousness."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: However, Camille Paglia, whose "Sexual Personae" was published in the same year as "The Beauty Myth", derided Wolf as unable to perform "historical analysis", and called her education "completely removed from reality." Her comments touched off a series of debates between Wolf and Paglia in the pages of "The New Republic".


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Caryn James in "The New York Times" stated:"No other work has so forcefully confronted the anti-feminism that emerged during the conservative, yuppified 1980's, or so honestly depicted the confusion of accomplished women who feel emotionally and physically tortured by the need to look like movie stars. Even by the standards of pop-cultural feminist studies, "The Beauty Myth" is a mess, but that doesn't mean it's wrong." James also wrote that the book's "claims of an intensified anti-feminism are plausible, but Ms. Wolf doesn't begin to prove them because her logic is so lame, her evidence so easily knocked down." Marilyn Yalom in "The Washington Post" called the book "persuasive" and praised its "accumulated evidence".


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Revisiting "Beauty Myth" in 2019 for "The New Republic", literary critic Maris Kreizman recalls that reading it as an undergraduate made her "world burst open". However, as she matured, Kreizman saw Wolf's books as "poorly argued tracts" with Wolf making "wilder and wilder assertions" over time. Kreizman "began to write (Wolf) off as a fringe character" despite the fact that she had "once informed my own feminism so deeply."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In "Fire with Fire" (1993), Wolf wrote on politics, female empowerment and women's sexual liberation. She wished to persuade women to reject "victim feminism" for "power feminism." She argued for diminishing the issue of opposing men, avoiding divisive issues such as abortion and the rights of lesbians and considering more universal issues like violence against women, pay disparities and sexual harassment. Mary Nemeth wrote in "Maclean's" that her "central thesis—that when Anita Hill in 1991 accused U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment she provoked a 'genderquake' that turned American women into 'the political ruling class'—seems grossly exaggerated." Melissa Benn in the "London Review of Books" described it as Wolf's "call for a realpolitik in which 'sisterhood and capital' might be allies".


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Michiko Kakutani of "The New York Times" assailed the work for its "dubious oversimplifications and highly debatable assertions" and its "disconcerting penchant for inflationary prose," nonetheless approving of Wolf's "efforts to articulate an accessible, pragmatic feminism, …helping to replace strident dogma with common sense." The "Time" magazine reviewer Martha Duffy dismissed the book as "flawed," although she commented that Wolf was "an engaging raconteur" who was also "savvy about the role of TV—especially the Thomas-Hill hearings and daytime talk shows—in radicalizing women, including homemakers." She characterized the book as advocating an inclusive strain of feminism that welcomed abortion opponents. Feminist author Natasha Walter writing in "The Independent" wrote that the book "has its faults, but compared with "The Beauty Myth" it has energy and spirit, and generosity too." Walter, however, criticized it for having a "narrow agenda" where "you will look in vain for much discussion of older women, of black women, of women with low incomes, of mothers." Characterizing Wolf as a "media star", Walter wrote: "She is particularly good, naturally, on the role of women in the media."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: "Promiscuities" (1997) reports on and analyzes the shifting patterns of contemporary adolescent sexuality. Wolf argues that literature is rife with examples of male coming-of-age stories, covered autobiographically by D. H. Lawrence, Tobias Wolff, J. D. Salinger and Ernest Hemingway, and covered misogynistically by Henry Miller, Philip Roth and Norman Mailer. Wolf insists that female accounts of adolescent sexuality have been systematically suppressed. Schools, in Wolf's opinion, should teach their students "sexual gradualism", masturbation, mutual masturbation and oral sex, which she sees as a more credible approach than total abstinence and without the risks of full intercourse.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf uses cross-cultural material to try to demonstrate that women have, across history, been celebrated as more carnal than men. Additionally, Wolf argues that women must reclaim the legitimacy of their own sexuality by shattering the polarization of women between virgin and whore. Partly an account of her own sexual history, she urged women to "redeem the slut in ourselves and rejoice in being bad girls".


title: Naomi Wolf

text: "Promiscuities" generally received negative reviews. In "The New York Times", Michiko Kakutani wrote that Wolf is "a frustratingly inept messenger: a sloppy thinker and incompetent writer" who "tries in vain to pass off tired observations as radical "aperçus", subjective musings as generational truths, sappy suggestions as useful ideas". On Wolf's claims about accounts of female sexuality being suppressed, Kakutani wrote: "Where has Ms. Wolf been? What about the raunchy confessions that surface daily on radio and television talk shows? What about all the memoirists—from Anais Nin to Kathryn Harrison." However, two days earlier in the "Times" Sunday edition, Weaver Courtney praised the book: "Anyone—particularly anyone who, like Ms. Wolf, was born in the 1960s—will have a very hard time putting down "Promiscuities". Told through a series of confessions, her book is a searing and thoroughly fascinating exploration of the complex wildlife of female sexuality and desire." In contrast, "The Library Journal" excoriated the work, writing, "Overgeneralization abounds as she attempts to apply the microcosmic events of this mostly white, middle-class, liberal milieu to a whole generation. …There is a desperate defensiveness in the tone of this book which diminishes the force of her argument."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: "I feel absolutely staggered by what I discovered after giving birth," Wolf said at the time "Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood" (2001) was published "Birth today is like agribusiness. It's like a chicken plant: they go in, they go out." she told Katharine Viner. "Pregnancy, birth and motherhood" has "made me a more radical feminist than I have ever been." The book draws heavily on Wolf's experience of her first pregnancy. She describes the "vacuous impassivity" of the ultrasound technician who gives her the first glimpse of her new baby. Wolf laments her C-section and examines why the procedure is common in the United States, advocating a return to midwifery. The second half of the book is anecdotal, focusing on inequalities between parents to child care. In the section describing being on the operating table having a caesarean, Wolf compares herself to Jesus at his Crucifixion. She outlines a "mothers' manifesto" in the book including flexi-time for both parents, neighborhood toy banks, and a radical mothers' movement.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In her "New York Times" review, Claire Dederer wrote that Wolf "barely pauses to acknowledge that Caesareans are, at times, a necessary and even lifesaving intervention." Wolf completes "her best writing when she's observing her own life" as a memoirist. Dederer believes her work in this idiom is not "self-indulgent. It seems vital, and in a sense radical, in the tradition of 1970's feminists who sought to speak to every aspect of women's lives."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf's "The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom from My Father on How to Live, Love, and See" (2005) is an account of her midlife crisis. She revalues her father's love, and his role as an artist and a teacher during a year living in a house in upper New York state.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In a promotional interview with "The Herald" (Glasgow), Wolf related her experience of a vision of Jesus: "just this figure who was the most perfected human being - full of light and full of love. …There was light coming out of him holographically, simply because he was unclouded."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In "" (2007), Wolf takes a historical look at the rise of fascism, outlining 10 steps necessary for a fascist group (or government) to destroy the democratic character of a nation-state. The book details how this pattern was implemented in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and elsewhere, and analyzes its emergence and application of all the 10 steps in American political affairs since the September 11 attacks. Alex Beam wrote in the "International Herald Tribune" (reprinted in "The New York Times"): "In the book, Wolf insists that she is not equating [George W.] Bush with Hitler, nor the United States with Nazi Germany, then proceeds to do just that." A month before the 2008 presidential election, she announced her intention to propose means to arrest President Bush. "Americans are facing a coup, as of this morning, October 1st", she said in a radio interview.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Several years later in 2013, Mark Nuckols argued in "The Atlantic" that Wolf's supposed historical parallels between incidents from the era of the European dictators and modern America are based on a highly selective reading in which Wolf omits significant details and misuses her sources. Writing for "The Daily Beast", Michael C. Moynihan characterized the book as "an astoundingly lazy piece of writing."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: "The End of America" was adapted for the screen as a documentary by filmmakers Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern, best known for "The Devil Came on Horseback" and "The Trials of Darryl Hunt". It premiered in October 2008, and was favorably reviewed in "The New York Times" by Stephen Holden by "Variety" magazine. Nigel Andrews in the "Financial Times" saw aspects of it positively, but "what isn't plausible or reality-related is the conclusion itself. At the door of the Third Reich, Wolf's credibility collapses." Moynihan described it as being "an even dumber documentary film" than the "dumb book".


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Interviewed by Alternet in 2010, she compared President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, believing aspects of the actions of both men were comparable.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf returned to her "The End of America" theme in a "Globe and Mail" article in 2014, considering how modern Western women, born in inclusive, egalitarian liberal democracies, are assuming positions of leadership in neofascist political movements.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: "Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries" (2008) was written as a sequel to "The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot". In the book, Wolf looks at times and places in history where citizens were faced with the closing of an open society and successfully fought back.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Published in 2012 on the topic of the vagina, "Vagina: A New Biography" was much criticized, especially by feminist authors. Katie Roiphe described it as "ludicrous" in "Slate": "I doubt the most brilliant novelist in the world could have created a more skewering satire of Naomi Wolf's career than her latest book." In "The Nation", Katha Pollitt considered it a "silly book" containing "much dubious neuroscience and much foolishness." It becomes "loopier as it goes on. We learn that women think and feel through their vagina, which can 'grieve' and feel insulted."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Toni Bentley wrote in "The New York Times Book Review" that Wolf used "shoddy research methodology", while with "her graceless writing, Wolf opens herself to ridicule on virtually every page." Janice Turner in "The Times" wrote that since Mary Wollstonecraft, female "writers have argued that women should not be defined by biology", yet "Wolf, our self-styled leader, has declared that female consciousness, creativity and destiny all come back" to a woman's genitals. "Los Angeles Times" columnist Meghan Daum wrote: "By asserting that what's between a woman's ears is directly informed by what's between her legs—'the vagina mediates female confidence, creativity and sense of transcendence,' Wolf writes—it acts as a perverse echo of Republican efforts to limit reproductive rights." In the book, according to Suzanne Moore in "The Guardian", "feminism becomes simply a highly mediated form of narcissism devoid of any actual brain/politics connection."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In "The New York Review of Books", Zoë Heller wrote that the book "offers an unusually clear insight into the workings of her mystic feminist philosophy". Part of the book concerns the history of the vagina's representation, but is "full of childlike generalizations" and her understanding of science "is pretty shaky too". In an interview with "The New York Times", Wolf rejected claims she had written more freely than her sources could sustain. Nina Burleigh, in "The New York Observer", suggested that critics of the book were so vehement "because (a) their editors handed the book to them for review because they thought it was an Important Feminist Book when it's actually slight and (b) there's a grain of truth in what she's trying to say."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In response to the criticism, Wolf stated in a television interview:"Anything that shows documentation of the brain and vagina connection is going to alarm some feminists…also feminism has kind of retreated into the academy and sort of embraced the idea that all gender is socially constructed and so here is a book that is actually looking at science…though there has been some criticisms of the book from some feminists…who say, well you can't look at the science because that means we have to grapple with the science…to me the feminist task of creating a just world isn't changed at all by this fascinating neuroscience that shows some differences between men and women."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: At a party to celebrate Wolf's publishing deal for this book, recounted in its pages, the male chef and host made pasta pieces shaped like a vulva, with sausages and salmon also on the menu. Perceiving the experience as a slight, Wolf apparently suffered writers' block for the next six months.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf's book "Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love" was published in 2019, based on the 2015 doctoral thesis she completed under the supervision of Trinity College, Oxford, literary scholar Stefano-Maria Evangelista. In the book, she studies the repression of homosexuality in relation to attitudes towards divorce and prostitution, and also in relation to the censorship of books.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: "Outrages" was published in the UK in May 2019 by Virago Press. On June 12, 2019, "Outrages" was named on the "O, The Oprah Magazine"s "The 32 Best Books by Women of Summer 2019" list. The following day, the US publisher recalled all copies from US bookstores.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In a 2019 BBC radio interview, broadcaster and author Matthew Sweet identified an error in a central tenet of the book: a misunderstanding of the legal term "death recorded", which Wolf had taken to mean that the convict had been executed but which in fact means that the convict was pardoned or the sentence was commuted. He cited a website for the Old Bailey Criminal Court, which Wolf had referred to as one of her sources earlier in the interview. Reviewers have described other errors of scholarship in the work.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf appeared at the Hay Festival, Wales in late May 2019, a few days after her exchange with Sweet, where she defended her book and said she had already corrected the error. She stated at an event in Manhattan in June that she was not embarrassed and felt grateful towards Sweet for the correction. On October 18, 2019, it became known that the release of the book by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the United States was being canceled, with copies already printed and distributed being pulled and pulped. Wolf expressed the hope that the book would still be published in the US.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: A UK paperback edition of the book was published by Virago in November 2020, with the incorrect references to the execution of men for sodomy that were included in the hardback edition removed. Interviewed about the new edition, Matthew Sweet said that the book continues to misread historical sources: "Dr Wolf has misrepresented the experiences of victims of child abuse and violent sexual assault. This is the most profound offence against her discipline, as well as the memories of real people on the historical record". Cultural historian Fern Riddell called the book a "calumny against gay people" in the nineteenth century and said that Wolf "presents child rapists and those taking part in acts of bestiality as being gay men in consensual relationships and that is completely wrong". "The Daily Telegraph" reported that there had been calls for Wolf's 2015 DPhil to be re-examined, and for Virago to withdraw the book. In a statement to "The Guardian", Wolf said the book had been reviewed "by leading scholars in the field", and said "it is clear that I have accurately represented the position". Oxford University stated that a "statement of clarification" to Wolf's thesis had been received and approved, and would be "available for consultation in the Bodleian Library in due course".


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In March 2021, "Times Higher Education" reported that Wolf's original thesis remained unavailable six years after it was examined. Oxford doctoral graduates can request an embargo of up to three years, with the potential for renewal. The thesis finally became available in April 2021, with nine pages of corrections attached dealing with the misreading of historic criminal records. Wolf had submitted the thesis to the archive in December 2020, more than five years after her DPhil was awarded, and she had requested a one-year extension to the embargo period so that she could seek legal advice. The extension request was declined.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: "Outrages" has been used as an example in university teaching about the danger of misreading historical sources.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In an October 1995 article for "The New Republic" Wolf was critical of contemporary pro–choice positions, arguing that the movement had "developed a lexicon of dehumanization" and urged feminists to accept abortion as a form of homicide and defend the procedure within the ambiguity of this moral conundrum. She continued, "Abortion should be legal; it is sometimes even necessary. Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must die."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf concluded by speculating that in a world of "real gender equality," passionate feminists "might well hold candlelight vigils at abortion clinics, standing shoulder to shoulder with the doctors who work there, commemorating and saying goodbye to the dead." In an article for "New York" magazine on the subtle manipulation of George W. Bush's image among women, Wolf wrote in 2005: "Abortion is an issue not of "Ms." Magazine-style fanaticism or suicidal Republican religious reaction, but a complex issue."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf suggested in a 2003 article for "New York" magazine that the ubiquity of internet pornography tends to enervate the sexual attraction of men toward typical real women. She writes, "The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as 'porn-worthy.' Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention." Wolf advocated abstaining from porn not on moral grounds but because "greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf has commented about the dress required of women living in Muslim countries. In "The Sydney Morning Herald" in August 2008, she wrote, "The West interprets veiling as repression of women and suppression of their sexuality. But when I traveled in Muslim countries and was invited to join a discussion in women–only settings within Muslim homes, I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women's appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one's husband. It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channeling—toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In the January 2013 issue of "The Atlantic", law and business professor Mark Nuckols wrote: "In her various books, articles, and public speeches, Wolf has demonstrated recurring disregard for the historical record and consistently mutilated the truth with selective and ultimately deceptive use of her sources." He further stated: "[W]hen she distorts facts to advance her political agenda, she dishonors the victims of history and poisons present-day public discourse about issues of vital importance to a free society." Nuckols argued that Wolf "has for many years now been claiming that a fascist coup in America is imminent… [I]n "The Guardian" she alleged, with no substantiation, that the U.S. government and big American banks are conspiring to impose a 'totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent'."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: "Vox" journalist Max Fisher in October 2014 urged Wolf's readers "to understand the distinction between her earlier work, which rose on its merits, and her newer conspiracy theories, which are unhinged, damaging, and dangerous."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Charles C. W. Cooke, writing for "National Review Online" in the same month, commented, "Over the last eight years, Naomi Wolf has written hysterically about coups and about vaginas and about little else besides. She has repeatedly insisted that the country is on the verge of martial law, and transmogrified every threat—both pronounced and overhyped—into a government-led plot to establish a dictatorship. She has made prediction after prediction that has simply not come to pass. Hers are not sober and sensible forecasts of runaway human nature, institutional atrophy, and constitutional decline, but psychedelic fever-dreams that are more typically suited to the "InfoWars" crowd."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Aaron Goldstein wrote in an October 2014 article in "The American Spectator," "Her words must be taken not just with a grain of salt, but a full shaker's worth." In the same month, Sarah Ditum wrote in the "New Statesman", "Perhaps it's not that Wolf is a feminist who's degenerated into conspiracism, but instead that she's a conspiracy theorist who happened to fall into feminism first. "The Beauty Myth" is a conspiracy theory of a sort, and sometimes conspiracies are real: the self-replicating power structure of patriarchy is one of them."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Shortly after the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested in 2010, she wrote in an article for "The Huffington Post" that the allegations made against him by two women amounted to no more than bad manners from a boyfriend. His accusers, she later wrote in several contexts, were working for the CIA and Assange had been falsely incriminated.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: On December 20, 2010, "Democracy Now!" featured a debate between Wolf and Jaclyn Friedman on the Assange case. According to Wolf, the alleged victims should have said no, asserted that they consented to having sex with him, and said the claims were politically motivated and demeaned the cause of legitimate rape victims. In a 2011 "Guardian" article she argued that the accuser in rape cases should not retain anonymity. She said anonymity in such cases was "a relic of the Victorian era" which "serves institutions that do not want to prosecute rapists". She said "this is particularly clear in the Assange case, where public opinion matters far more than usual". Writing in "The Nation", Katha Pollitt said Wolf's argument was that anonymity "impedes law enforcement", which Pollitt said "is a little bizarre: doesn't Wolf realize that anonymity applies only to the media? Everyone in the justice system knows who the complainants are." Laurie Penny wrote in the "New Statesman" in September 2012 that "Wolf has done great damage by using her platform as one of the world's most famous feminists to dismiss these women's allegations."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: On October 18, 2011, Wolf was arrested and detained in New York during the Occupy Wall Street protests, having ignored a police warning not to remain on the street in front of a building. Wolf spent about 30 minutes in a cell. She disputed the NYPD's interpretation of applicable laws: "I was taken into custody for disobeying an unlawful order. The issue is that I actually know New York City permit law…I didn't choose to get myself arrested. I chose to obey the law and that didn't protect me."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: A month later, Wolf argued in "The Guardian", citing leaked documents, that attacks on the Occupy movement were a coordinated plot, orchestrated by federal law enforcement agencies. Those leaks, she alleged, showed that the FBI was privately treating OWS as a terrorist threat, rather than the public assertions acknowledging it is a peaceful organization. The response to this article ranged from praise to criticism of Wolf for being overly speculative and creating a conspiracy theory. Wolf responded that there is ample evidence for her argument, and proceeded to review the information available to her at the time of the article, and what she alleged was new evidence since that time.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Imani Gandy of Balloon Juice wrote that "nothing substantiates Wolf's claims", that "Wolf's article has no factual basis whatsoever and is, therefore, a journalistic failure of the highest order" and that "it was incumbent upon (Wolf) to fully research her claims and to provide facts to back them up." Corey Robin, a political theorist, journalist, and associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, stated on his blog: "The reason Wolf gets her facts wrong is that she's got her theory wrong."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In early 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing the Global Intelligence Files, a trove of e-mails obtained via a hack by Anonymous and Jeremy Hammond. Among them was an email with an official Department of Homeland Security document from October 2011 attached. It indicated that DHS was closely watching Occupy, and concluded, "While the peaceful nature of the protests has served so far to mitigate their impact, larger numbers and support from groups such as Anonymous substantially increase the risk for potential incidents and enhance the potential security risk to critical infrastructure." In late December 2012, FBI documents released following an FOIA request from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund revealed that the FBI used counterterrorism agents and other resources to extensively monitor the national Occupy movement. The documents contained no references to agency personnel covertly infiltrating Occupy branches, but did indicate that the FBI gathered information from police departments and other law enforcement agencies relating to planned protests. Additionally, the blog Techdirt reported that the documents disclosed a plot by unnamed parties "to murder OWS leadership in Texas" but that "the FBI never bothered to inform the targets of the threats against their lives."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In a December 2012 "Guardian" article, Wolf wrote:It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall [2011]—so mystifying at the time—was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves—was coordinated with the big banks themselves.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: How simple…just to label an entity a 'terrorist organization' and choke off, disrupt or indict its sources of financing.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: [The FBI crackdown on Occupy] was never really about 'the terrorists'. It was not even about civil unrest. It was always about this moment, when vast crimes might be uncovered by citizens—it was always, that is to say, meant to be about you."Mother Jones" claimed that none of the documents revealed efforts by federal law enforcement agencies to disband the Occupy camps, and that the documents did not provide much evidence that federal officials attempted to suppress protesters' free speech rights. It was, said "Mother Jones", "a far cry from Wolf's contention."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In June 2013, "New York" magazine reported Wolf, in a recent Facebook post, had expressed her "creeping concern" that NSA leaker Edward Snowden "is not who he purports to be, and that the motivations involved in the story may be more complex than they appear to be." Wolf was similarly skeptical of Snowden's "very pretty pole-dancing Facebooking girlfriend who appeared for, well, no reason in the media coverage…and who keeps leaking commentary, so her picture can be recycled in the press." She pondered whether he was planted by "the Police State".


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf responded on her website: "I do find a great deal of media/blog discussion about serious questions such as those I raised, questions that relate to querying some sources of news stories, and their potential relationship to intelligence agencies or to other agendas that may not coincide with the overt narrative, to be extraordinarily ill-informed and naive." Specifically regarding Snowden, she wrote, "Why should it be seen as bizarre to wonder, if there are some potential red flags—the key term is 'wonder'—if a former NSA spy turned apparent whistleblower might possibly still be—working for the same people he was working for before?"


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In a series of Facebook postings in October 2014, Wolf questioned the authenticity of videos purporting to show beheadings of two American journalists and two Britons by the Islamic State, implying that they had been staged by the US government and that the victims and their parents were actors. Wolf also charged that the US was dispatching military troops not to assist in treating the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, but to carry the disease back home to justify a military takeover of America. She further said that the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, in which Scotland voted to remain in the United Kingdom, was faked. Speaking about this at a demonstration in Glasgow on October 12, Wolf said, "I truly believe it was rigged."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Responding to such criticism, Wolf said, "All the people who are attacking me right now for 'conspiracy theories' have no idea what they are talking about ... people who assume the dominant narrative MUST BE TRUE and the dominant reasons MUST BE REAL are not experienced in how that world works." To her nearly 100,000 Facebook followers, Wolf maintained, "I stand by what I wrote." However, in a later Facebook post, Wolf retracted her statement: "I am not asserting that the ISIS videos have been staged," she wrote.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: I certainly sincerely apologize if one of my posts was insensitively worded. I have taken that one down. ... I am not saying the ISIS beheading videos are not authentic. I am not saying they are not records of terrible atrocities. I am saying that they are not yet independently confirmed by two sources as authentic, which any Journalism School teaches, and the single source for several of them, SITE, which received half a million dollars in government funding in 2004, and which is the only source cited for several, has conflicts of interest that should be disclosed to readers of news outlets. Max Fisher commented that "the videos were widely distributed on open-source jihadist online outlets" while the "Maryland-based nonprofit SITE monitors extremist social media." Wolf deleted her original Facebook posts.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Wolf has frequently promoted COVID-19 misinformation, misinformation related to vaccination and 5G conspiracy theories.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Following the election of Joe Biden as US president, Wolf tweeted on 9 November 2020: "If I'd known Biden was open to 'lockdowns' as he now states, which is something historically unprecedented in any pandemic, and a terrifying practice, one that won't ever end because elites love it, I would never have voted for him". In February 2021, Wolf appeared on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Fox News, where she said that government COVID-19 restrictions were turning the U.S. "into a totalitarian state before everyone's eyes," and went on to say that "I really hope we wake up quickly, because history also shows that it's a small window in which people can fight back before it is too dangerous to fight back."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In an interview for Sky News Australia in early March 2021, Wolf claimed that lockdown policies are an "invention" of Chinese leader Xi Jinping. She also claimed that "Every human right in law is being violated", that Australians are being "lied to over and over", and that Australians are being psychologically tortured.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: On April 19, 2021, Wolf alleged that National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci, Biden's chief medical advisor, "doesn't work for us," asserting he had loyalties to Israel that interfered with service to public health. Wolf pointed to $1 million she said Fauci had received from the state of Israel. It was actually the Dan David Prize, a prestigious private award that Fauci received in 2021 for public service.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf opposes COVID-19 vaccine passports, saying that they represent "the absolute end of the line for human liberty in the West."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf has frequently shared conspiracy theories concerning the safety and efficacy of vaccines against COVID-19. In April 2021, Wolf was instrumental in amplifying and spreading myths that the vaccines cause female infertility. Wolf's conspiratorial and anti-vaccine stance has been criticized as being irresponsible, and she has also been the subject of ridicule.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Twitter suspended her account in June 2021, a decision the company has said is permanent according to the London "Observer". At the end of July 2021, it was reported by "The Daily Beast" that Wolf was a co-plaintiff in former-President Donald Trump's social media lawsuit. According to Wolf, Twitter's suspension of her account led her to lose "over half of her business model, investors in her business, and other sources of income."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf appeared on the May 23, 2022 edition of "The Charlie Kirk Show", where she stated: "There are military-age men pouring over the border from places like Afghanistan and Ukraine. And the easiest thing in the world to send them to God knows where, you know, and to arm them to assist the World Health Organization". She argued that the Second Amendment made it harder for government to subjugate the population, but that this was a possibility. Wolf stated: "I really hope that it doesn't devolve into civil war, which is really what the next thing is in history when you have an occupying force, which is what the WHO will be, you know, by next week".


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In October 2022, Wolf appeared on UK TV channel GB News, claiming in an interview that COVID-19 vaccines are part of an effort "to destroy British civil society". Ofcom, the UK broadcasting regulatory agency, announced an investigation into GB News after receiving more than 400 complaints from members of the public.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf's first marriage was in 1993 to journalist David Shipley, then an editor at "The New York Times". The couple had two children, a son and daughter. Wolf and Shipley divorced in 2005.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: On November 23, 2018, Wolf married Brian William O'Shea, a US Army veteran, private detective, and owner of Striker Pierce Investigations. According to a "New York Times" article published in November 2018, Wolf and O'Shea met in 2014 following threats on the internet made against Wolf after she reported on human rights violations in the Middle East and contacts recommended O'Shea.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In 2004, in an article for "New York" magazine, Wolf accused literary scholar Harold Bloom of a "sexual encroachment" in late Fall 1983 for touching her inner thigh. She said that what she alleged Bloom did was not harassment, either legally or emotionally, and she did not think herself a "victim", but that she had harbored this secret for 21 years. Explaining why she had finally gone public with the charges, Wolf wrote,


title: Naomi Wolf

text: I began, nearly a year ago, to try—privately—to start a conversation with my alma mater that would reassure me that steps had been taken in the ensuing years to ensure that unwanted sexual advances of this sort weren't still occurring. I expected Yale to be responsive. After nine months and many calls and e-mails, I was shocked to conclude that the atmosphere of collusion that had helped to keep me quiet twenty years ago was still intact—as secretive as a Masonic lodge. Sexual encroachment in an educational context or a workplace is, most seriously, a corruption of meritocracy; it is in this sense parallel to bribery. I was not traumatized personally, but my educational experience was corrupted. If we rephrase sexual transgression in school and work as a civil-rights and civil-society issue, everything becomes less emotional, less personal. If we see this as a systemic corruption issue, then when people bring allegations, the focus will be on whether the institution has been damaged in its larger mission.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In "Slate" magazine around the time the allegations against Bloom first surfaced, Meghan O'Rourke wrote that Wolf generalized about sexual assault at Yale on the basis of her alleged personal experience. Moreover, O'Rourke commented, that despite Wolf's assertion sexual assault existed at Yale, she did not interview any Yale students for her story. In addition, O'Rourke wrote, "She jumps through verbal hoops to make it clear she was not 'personally traumatized,' yet she spends paragraphs describing the incident in precisely those terms." O'Rourke wrote that, despite Wolf's claim that her educational experience was corrupted, "(s)he neglects to mention that she later was awarded a Rhodes (scholarship)." O'Rourke concluded Wolf's "gaps and imprecision" in the "New York" article "give fodder to skeptics who think sexual harassment charges are often just a form of hysteria."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Separately, a formal complaint was filed with the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights on March 15, 2011, by 16 current and former Yale students—12 female and 4 male—describing a sexually hostile environment at Yale. A federal investigation of Yale University began in March 2011 in response to the complaints. Wolf stated on CBS's "The Early Show" in April: "Yale has been systematically covering up much more serious crimes than the ones that can be easily identified." More specifically, she alleged "they use the sexual harassment grievance procedure in a very cynical way, purporting to be supporting victims, but actually using a process to stonewall victims, to isolate them, and to protect the university." Yale settled the federal complaint in June 2012, acknowledging "inadequacies" but not facing "disciplinary action with the understanding that it keeps in place policy changes instituted after the complaint was filed. The school (was) required to report on its progress to the Office of Civil Rights until May, 2014."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: In January 2018, Wolf accused Yale officials of blocking her from filing a formal grievance against Bloom. She told "The New York Times" that she had attempted to file the complaint in 2015 with Yale's University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct, but that the university had refused to accept it. On January 16, 2018, Wolf said, she determined to see Yale's provost, Ben Polak, in another attempt to present her case. "As she documented on Twitter," the newspaper reported, "she brought a suitcase and a sleeping bag, because she said she did not know how long she would have to stay. When she arrived at the provost's office, she said, security guards prevented her from entering any elevators. Eventually, she said, Aley Menon, the secretary of the sexual misconduct committee, appeared and they met in the committee's offices for an hour, during which she gave Ms. Menon a copy of her complaint." This was reported and confirmed by Norman Vanamee who apparently met Wolf at Yale on this morning. In "Town & Country" magazine in January 2018, Vanamee returned to the story and wrote, "Yale University has a 93-person police department, and, after the guard called for backup, three of its armed and uniformed officers appeared and stationed themselves between Wolf and the elevator bank."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: During an interview for "Time" magazine in spring 2015, Bloom denied ever being indoors with "this person" whom he referred to as "Dracula's daughter."


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Numerous Cyrillic alphabets are based on the Cyrillic script. The early Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the 9th century AD and replaced the earlier Glagolitic script developed by the Byzantine theologians Cyril and Methodius. It is the basis of alphabets used in various languages, past and present, Slavic origin, and non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the official alphabet for their national languages. About half of them are in Russia. Cyrillic is one of the most-used writing systems in the world.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Some of these are illustrated below; for others, and for more detail, see the links. Sounds are transcribed in the IPA. While these languages largely have phonemic orthographies, there are occasional exceptions—for example, Russian is pronounced in a number of words, an orthographic relic from when they were pronounced (e.g. его "yego" 'him/his', is pronounced rather than ).


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Spellings of names transliterated into the Roman alphabet may vary, especially й ("y"/"j"/"i"), but also г ("gh"/"g"/"h") and ж ("zh"/"j").


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Unlike the Latin script, which is usually adapted to different languages by adding diacritical marks/supplementary glyphs (such as accents, umlauts, fadas, tildes and cedillas) to standard Roman letters, by assigning new phonetic values to existing letters ("e.g." <c>, whose original value in Latin was /k/, represents /ts/ in West Slavic languages, /ʕ/ in Somali, /t͡ʃ/ in many African languages and /d͡ʒ/ in Turkish), or by the use of digraphs (such as <sh>, <ch>, <ng> and <ny>), the Cyrillic script is usually adapted by the creation of entirely new letter shapes. However, in some alphabets invented in the 19th century, such as Mari, Udmurt and Chuvash, umlauts and breves also were used.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Bulgarian and Bosnian Sephardim without Hebrew typefaces occasionally printed Judeo-Spanish in Cyrillic.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Non-Slavic alphabets are generally modelled after Russian, but often bear striking differences, particularly when adapted for Caucasian languages. The first few of these alphabets were developed by Orthodox missionaries for the Finnic and Turkic peoples of Idel-Ural (Mari, Udmurt, Mordva, Chuvash, and Kerashen Tatars) in the 1870s. Later, such alphabets were created for some of the Siberian and Caucasus peoples who had recently converted to Christianity. In the 1930s, some of those languages were switched to the Uniform Turkic Alphabet. All of the peoples of the former Soviet Union who had been using an Arabic or other Asian script (Mongolian script etc.) also adopted Cyrillic alphabets, and during the Great Purge in the late 1930s, all of the Latin alphabets of the peoples of the Soviet Union were switched to Cyrillic as well (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were occupied and annexed by Soviet Union in 1940, and were not affected by this change). The Abkhazian and Ossetian languages were switched to Georgian script, but after the death of Joseph Stalin, both also adopted Cyrillic. The last language to adopt Cyrillic was the Gagauz language, which had used Greek script before.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: In Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, the use of Cyrillic to write local languages has often been a politically controversial issue since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as it evokes the era of Soviet rule and Russification. Some of Russia's peoples such as the Tatars have also tried to drop Cyrillic, but the move was halted under Russian law. A number of languages have switched from Cyrillic to either a Roman-based orthography or a return to a former script.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: The following table lists the Cyrillic letters which are used in the alphabets of most of the national languages which use a Cyrillic alphabet. Exceptions and additions for particular languages are noted below.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Before 1918, there were four extra letters in use: Іі (replaced by Ии), Ѳѳ (Фита "Fita", replaced by Фф), Ѣѣ (Ять "Yat", replaced by Ее), and Ѵѵ (ижица "Izhitsa", replaced by Ии); these were eliminated by reforms of Russian orthography.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: The Rusyn language is spoken by the Carpatho-Rusyns in Carpathian Ruthenia, Slovakia, and Poland, and the Pannonian Rusyns in Croatia and Serbia.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: The Cyrillic alphabet was originally developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th – 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: It has been used in Bulgaria (with modifications and exclusion of certain archaic letters via spelling reforms) continuously since then, superseding the previously used Glagolitic alphabet, which was also invented and used there before the Cyrillic script overtook its use as a written script for the Bulgarian language. The Cyrillic alphabet was used in the then much bigger territory of Bulgaria (including most of today's Serbia), North Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Northern Greece (Macedonia region), Romania and Moldova, officially from 893. It was also transferred from Bulgaria and adopted by the East Slavic languages in Kievan Rus' and evolved into the Russian alphabet and the alphabets of many other Slavic (and later non-Slavic) languages. Later, some Slavs modified it and added/excluded letters from it to better suit the needs of their own language varieties.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Historically, the Croatian language briefly used the Cyrillic script in areas with large Croatian language or Bosnian language populations.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: South Slavic Cyrillic alphabets (with the exception of Bulgarian) are generally derived from Serbian Cyrillic. It, and by extension its descendants, differs from the East Slavic ones in that the alphabet has generally been simplified: Letters such as Я, Ю, and Ё, representing /ja/, /ju/, and /jo/ in Russian, respectively, have been removed. Instead, these are represented by the digraphs , , and , respectively. Additionally, the letter Е, representing in Russian, is instead pronounced or , with being represented by . Alphabets based on the Serbian that add new letters often do so by adding an acute accent over an existing letter.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: The Karelian language was written in the Cyrillic script in various forms until 1940 when publication in Karelian ceased in favor of Finnish, except for Tver Karelian, written in a Latin alphabet. In 1989 publication began again in the other Karelian dialects and Latin alphabets were used, in some cases with the addition of Cyrillic letters such as ь.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Over the last century, the alphabet used to write Kildin Sami has changed three times: from Cyrillic to Latin and back again to Cyrillic. Work on the latest version of the official orthography commenced in 1979. It was officially approved in 1982 and started to be widely used by 1987.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: The Mongolic languages include Khalkha (in Mongolia; Cyrillic is official since 1941, in practice from 1946), Buryat (around Lake Baikal; Cyrillic is used since the 1930s) and Kalmyk (northwest of the Caspian Sea; Cyrillic is used in various forms since the 1920-30s). Khalkha Mongolian is also written with the Mongol vertical alphabet, which was the official script before 1941. Since the beginning of the 1990s Mongolia has been making attempts to extend the rather limited use of Mongol script and the most recent National Plan for Mongol Script aims to bring its use to the same level as Cyrillic by 2025 and maintain a dual-script system (digraphia).


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Long vowels are indicated with double letters. The Cyrillic letters Кк, Пп, Фф and Щщ are not used in native Mongolian words, but only for Russian or other loans (Пп may occur in native onomatopoeic words).


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: The Buryat (буряад) Cyrillic script is similar to the Khalkha above, but Ьь indicates palatalization as in Russian. Buryat does not use Вв, Кк, Пп, Фф, Цц, Чч, Щщ or Ъъ in its native words (Пп may occur in native onomatopoeic words).


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: The Kalmyk (хальмг) Cyrillic script differs from Khalkha in some respects: there are additional letters (Әә, Җҗ, Ңң), letters Ээ, Юю and Яя appear only word-initially, long vowels are written double in the first syllable (нөөрин), but single in syllables after the first. Short vowels are omitted altogether in syllables after the first syllable (хальмг = ). Жж and Пп are used in loanwords only (Russian, Tibetan, etc.), but Пп may occur in native onomatopoeic words.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Avar is a Caucasian language, spoken in the Republic of Dagestan, of the Russian Federation, where it is co-official together with other Caucasian languages like Dargwa, Lak, Lezgian and Tabassaran. All these alphabets, and other ones (Abaza, Adyghe, Chechen, Ingush, Kabardian) have an extra sign: palochka (Ӏ), which gives voiceless occlusive consonants its particular ejective sound.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Lezgian is spoken by the Lezgins, who live in southern Dagestan and northern Azerbaijan. Lezgian is a literary language and an official language of Dagestan.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: The Cyrillic alphabet is used for the Chuvash language since the late 19th century, with some changes in 1938.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Kazakh can be alternatively written in the Latin alphabet. Latin is going to be the only used alphabet in 2022, alongside the modified Arabic alphabet (in the People's Republic of China, Iran and Afghanistan).


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: The Cyrillic letters Вв, Ёё, Цц, Чч, Щщ, Ъъ, Ьь and Ээ are not used in native Kazakh words, but only for Russian loans.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Tatar has used Cyrillic since 1939, but the Russian Orthodox Tatar community has used Cyrillic since the 19th century. In 2000 a new Latin alphabet was adopted for Tatar, but it is used generally on the Internet.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: Turkmen, written 1940–1994 exclusively in Cyrillic, since 1994 officially in Roman, but in everyday communication Cyrillic is still used along with Roman script.


title: Cyrillic alphabets

text: From 1941 the Cyrillic script was used exclusively. In 1998 the government has adopted a Latin alphabet to replace it. The deadline for making this transition has however been repeatedly changed, and Cyrillic is still more common. It is not clear that the transition will be made at all.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: Cebu Pacific Air, Inc., operating as Cebu Pacific (), is a low-cost airline of the Philippines. Founded in 1988, it is Asia's oldest low-cost airline. It offers scheduled flights to both domestic and international destinations. The airline operates flights from a primary hub in Manila, two secondary hubs in Cebu and Davao, and five focus cities in Cagayan de Oro, Clark, Iloilo, Kalibo, and Zamboanga.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: The airline was established on August 26, 1988. Republic Act No. 7151, which grants a legislative franchise to Cebu Pacific Air, Inc. to operate was approved on August 30, 1991. It started operations on March 8, 1996, with its first flight from Manila to Cebu. Domestic services commenced following market deregulation by the Philippine government. The airline was subsequently acquired by JG Summit Holdings, which was at the time, owned by John Gokongwei. It temporarily ceased operations in February 1998 after being grounded by the government due to an accident that killed 104 people but resumed services later the next month following re-certification of its aircraft. It initially started with 24 domestic flights daily among Metro Manila, Metro Cebu, and Metro Davao. By the end of 2001, its operations had grown to about 80 daily flights to 18 domestic destinations.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: In the 2000s, Cebu Pacific was granted rights to operate international flights to the region, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Guam. International flights were launched on November 22, 2001, with a twice-daily service to Hong Kong. On March 1, 2002, it commenced thrice-weekly flights to Seoul. Other regional flights were introduced and suspended later; however, including flights to Singapore (from November 6, 2002, to January 2003) and from Manila via Subic to Seoul (from December 2002) due in part to the effects of the SARS epidemic.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: The airline resumed its Manila–Singapore flights on August 31, 2006 and launched its direct flight from Cebu to Singapore on October 23, 2006, the first low-cost airline to serve the Cebu-Singapore-Cebu sector, and in direct competition with Singapore Airlines' subsidiary SilkAir, CEB was the only Philippine carrier serving the Cebu-Singapore-Cebu route for years until Philippine Airlines resumed its direct service in 2017. The airline operates direct flights from Cebu to Hong Kong which commenced October 2, 2006, which also made CEB the only Philippine carrier to serve a Cebu-Hong Kong-Cebu route after PAL terminated its direct service and is now code-sharing with Cathay Pacific for this route.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: Cebu Pacific's plans to begin international flights from Clark were initially unsuccessful when its request was denied. The nations involved came to an agreement that Cebu Pacific would be only allowed to operate charter flights from Clark to the respective countries' airport(s). Only Singapore initially agreed to allow Cebu Pacific to fly scheduled flights from Clark to Singapore. It later expanded its international routes from Clark to Cebu, Davao, Hong Kong, Macau, and Tokyo.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: On November 12, 2007, Cebu Pacific announced Davao's Francisco Bangoy International Airport as its fourth hub. Cebu Pacific announced that it would initially fly internationally from Davao City to Singapore, Hong Kong and fly one domestic flight to Iloilo. Both direct services from Davao to Singapore and Iloilo commenced on May 8, 2008, while the service to Hong Kong commenced on May 9. In late 2007, Cebu Pacific announced plans to launch non-stop flights to the United States West Coast, Houston, Texas and Chicago, Illinois by mid-2009.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: In August 2009, Cebu Pacific became the first airline in the Philippines to use social media. The airline created a fan page on Facebook and Twitter.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: In October 2010, the airline completed an initial public offering of 30.4% of outstanding shares. It raised prior to an exercise of an overallotment option and was the largest IPO made by a low-cost carrier.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: In 2012, Cebu Pacific planned to commence international long-haul flights to the Middle East, the United States, Australia, and some parts of Europe using the Airbus A330-300. The first long-haul flight commenced to Dubai, United Arab Emirates on October 7, 2013. Cebu Pacific is also applying for rights for a daily service to Auckland, New Zealand.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: In June 2015, Cebu Pacific revealed its new logo that represents the colors of the Philippines and also symbolizes as an evolution of a low-cost pioneer. The airline received its first Airbus A320 painted in the new livery on January 22, 2016.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: New hubs were also launched in the 2010s. In November 2012, Iloilo International Airport was designated as the airline's fifth hub and launched direct international flights to Hong Kong and Singapore in that month. The airline launched Cagayan de Oro's Laguindingan Airport as its seventh hub in October 2017 and launched direct flights to Dumaguete and Caticlan from Cagayan de Oro.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: The airline through its subsidiary Cebgo launched flights to Basco, Batanes from March 27 to October 27, 2018. On August 14 of the same year, the airline commenced thrice-weekly flights to Melbourne, Australia.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the operations of the airline and its regional subsidiary. During the enhanced community quarantine in Luzon from March to May 2020, several flights were cancelled. Due to low passenger demand, the airline laid off 1,300 employees in 2020, and sent many aircraft to indefinite storage. As travel demand recovers, it started rehiring retrenched employees in November 2021 and aims to restore its full workforce by 2023. By July 2022, the airline operated at 88% of pre-pandemic levels, with domestic operations being restored to 100% of pre-pandemic levels.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: Cebu Pacific has its headquarters at the Cebu Pacific Building along Domestic Road in Pasay City. The airline is a subsidiary of JG Summit Holdings.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: On May 28, 2008, Cebu Pacific was named as the world's number one airline in terms of growth. The airline was also ranked fifth in Asia for Budget Airline passengers transported and 23rd in the world. The airline carried a total of almost 5.5 million passengers in 2007, an increase of 57.4 percent from 2006.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: In 2010, Cebu Pacific became the Philippines' largest airline based on number of passengers flown on domestic and international routes. According to Civil Aeronautics Board data, Cebu Pacific flew 2.45 million total passengers in the first quarter of 2010, nearly 110,000 more than Philippine Airlines, which carried 2.34 million systemwide during the same period.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: In January 2011, Cebu Pacific flew its 50 millionth passenger. The airline flew its 100 millionth passenger in January 2015, its 150 millionth in October 2017, and its 200 millionth passenger in March 2022.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: Cebu Pacific was originally positioned as a low-cost carrier, but the airline only transitioned to the low-cost model in 2005. In November 2005, Cebu Pacific reduced its air fares by half to increase the airline's revenue by twenty percent. Following its transition to a low-cost model, the airline gained a significant increase in passengers. Cebu Pacific President Lance Gokongwei said that the low fares aim to attract more people to travel by air.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: Cebu Pacific was the only Philippines-based member airline of Northwest Airlines' WorldPerks award travel program. WorldPerks offered regular travellers the ability to obtain free tickets, first-class upgrades on flights and other types of rewards. On August 1, 2006, Northwest and Cebu Pacific ended their mileage-accrual agreement. Cebu Pacific codeshares flights with Garuda Indonesia via Jakarta to Manila.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: On May 16, 2016, Cebu Pacific became a founding member of the world's largest low-cost carrier alliance, Value Alliance. It joined other pioneer members Singapore's Scoot, South Korea's Jeju Air, Thailand's Nok Air and NokScoot, Tigerair, Tigerair Australia, and Japan's Vanilla Air in the low-cost carrier network. Cebu Pacific is also currently the only Philippine carrier which is a member of an airline alliance.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: This table shows the financial and operational performance of Cebu Pacific (each fiscal year ended December 31):


title: Cebu Pacific

text: Cebgo is the airline's regional subsidiary. It operates an all-turboprop fleet of ATR 72-600 aircraft and is used in regional domestic routes. It was founded in May 2015 following the acquisition of Tigerair Philippines by Cebu Pacific.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: Cebu Pacific Cargo operates two dedicated cargo turboprop aircraft. The airline announced in 2018 that it would enter the dedicated cargo market to support the increase in demand for logistics.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: Cebu Pacific currently flies to 36 domestic destinations and 26 international destinations in 16 countries across the Asia Pacific region. The airline has the most extensive domestic route network in the Philippines.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: The airline previously operated a combined fleet of jet and turboprop aircraft. In 2007, Cebu Pacific ordered six ATR 72-500 turboprop aircraft for its regional domestic flights. The ATR aircraft were transferred to its regional subsidiary Cebgo in 2015. In the same year, Cebu Pacific ceased turboprop operations, while Cebgo ceased jet operations with the return of its last Airbus A320 to its parent company.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: As part of the airline's modernization, Cebu Pacific is replacing its existing aircraft with new fuel-efficient aircraft by 2028. In addition, as part of the airline's environment initiatives, Cebu Pacific used sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) on its delivery flights, and tested SAF on a commercial passenger flight from Singapore to Manila on September 28, 2022.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: In 2004, Cebu Pacific signed a purchase agreement with Airbus for the lease of two A320s and the acquisition of twelve A319s to replace its existing fleet of Boeing 757 and McDonnell Douglas DC-9 aircraft. It later ordered seven additional A320s. The A320s supported the airline's expanding international and domestic operations.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: Cebu Pacific received its first A320 in 2005, while the airline received its first A320neo in 2019. On June 18, 2019, Cebu Pacific announced an order for an additional five A320neos to replace the older Airbus A320-200.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: The A320 fleet currently flies to domestic and international regional destinations in Southeast Asia and East Asia.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: In June 2011, Cebu Pacific signed a memorandum of understanding for 30 Airbus A321neos including nine leased that will help the airline's growth and development. The deal was finalized in August 2011, with deliveries commencing in 2017. However, due to problems with the Pratt & Whitney engines, the deliveries were delayed. Instead, in June of that year, the airline ordered seven A321ceos to meet ongoing strong growth on its domestic and regional network.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: The first 230-seater A321ceo was delivered on March 22, 2018. On January 20, 2019, the airline received its first 236-seater A321neo, registered as RP-C4118 and powered with Pratt & Whitney engines. Like the A320, the A321 currently flies to domestic and international destinations.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: On June 18, 2019, Cebu Pacific ordered 10 A321XLRs. The airline is one of the few launch carriers of the newly launched long-range narrow-body aircraft.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: In 2007, the airline ordered six A330-300s to operate Middle Eastern destinations such as Dubai; East Asia routes such as Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, Taipei, and Tokyo, and Southeast Asia routes such as Bangkok, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore. It will also be used in the domestic sector, namely flights to Cebu, Davao, and General Santos. Cebu Pacific received its first A330-300 on June 15, 2013. In 2016, the carrier then added two more A330s on its orders to complement earlier fleet in new long-haul routes, such as Sydney and Melbourne.


title: Cebu Pacific

text: On June 18, 2019, Cebu Pacific ordered 16 Airbus A330neos to replace the Airbus A330ceos. The deal was finalized in November 2019. On November 28, 2021, Cebu Pacific received its first 459-seater A330-900.


title: Gainax

text: Gainax Co., Ltd. (stylized as GAINAX; , Hepburn: ) is a Japanese anime studio famous for productions such as "Neon Genesis Evangelion", "", "Gunbuster", "", "Kare Kano", "FLCL", "Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi", and "Gurren Lagann", which have garnered critical acclaim and commercial success. "Evangelion" has reportedly grossed over 150 billion yen, or approximately 1.2 billion. In a discussion at the 2006 Tekkoshocon, Matt Greenfield claimed that "Evangelion" had grossed over 2 billion; Takeda reiterated in 2002 that "It sold record numbers of laserdiscs in Japan, and the DVD is still selling well today", as well as for their association with award-winning anime director and studio co-founder Hideaki Anno. The company is headquartered in Koganei, Tokyo.


title: Gainax

text: Until "Neon Genesis Evangelion", Gainax typically worked on stories created in-house, but the studio has increasingly developed anime adaptations of existing manga like "Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou" and "Mahoromatic". Series produced by Gainax are often known for their controversial twist endings. The "Animage" Anime Grand Prix has been awarded to Gainax for "" in 1991, "Neon Genesis Evangelion" in 1995 and 1996, and "The End of Evangelion" in 1997.


title: Gainax

text: The studio was formed in the early 1980s as "Daicon Film" by university students Hideaki Anno, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Hiroyuki Yamaga, Takami Akai, Toshio Okada, Yasuhiro Takeda and Shinji Higuchi. Their first project was an animated short for the 20th Annual Japan National SF Convention, also known as Daicon III, held in 1981 in Osaka, Japan. The short film is about a girl who fights monsters, robots, and spaceships from early science fiction TV shows and films (including "Ultraman", "Gundam", "Space Runaway Ideon", "Space Battleship Yamato", "Star Trek", "Star Wars", and "Godzilla") until she finally reaches a desert plain and pours a glass of water on a dried-out daikon radish, which immediately resurrects itself, grows into a huge spaceship, and beams her aboard. Though the short had an ambitious scope, the animation was rough and low-quality.


title: Gainax

text: The group made a much bigger splash with the short they produced for the 22nd Annual Japan National SF Convention, Daicon IV, in 1983. Starting with a better animated recap of their original 1981 short, the short then moves to the girl as a grown woman, wearing a bunny suit and fighting an even wider range of science fiction creatures (including various Mobile Suits from the "Gundam" series, Darth Vader, an Alien, a "Macross" Valkyrie, a Pern dragon, Aslan, a Klingon battle cruiser, Spider-Man, and a pan across a vast array of hundreds of other characters) while surfing through the sky on the sword Stormbringer. The action was all set to the Electric Light Orchestra song "Twilight", though the group's failure to properly license the song would prevent the short's official release on DVD (and make the limited laserdisc release of the Daicon shorts very rare and highly sought after items). The Daicon IV short firmly established Daicon Film as a talented new anime studio (albeit small and with only 20 million yen or about US$200,000). The studio changed its name to Gainax in 1985, basing the term "Gainax" on an obscure Tottori Prefecture term for "giant", with the English suffix "-x" added because it sounded "good and was international".


title: Gainax

text: Gainax's first work as a commercial entity was "", released in 1987. "Honneamise" was (and still is) critically acclaimed and a classic anime movie; however, it had a tepid commercial reaction (Gainax did attempt to develop a sequel beginning in March 1992, but was unable to do it due to lack of funds). The next release, the 1988 OVA "Gunbuster", was a commercial success and put Gainax on a stabler footing to produce works like "" and "Otaku no Video". During this period, Gainax also produced a number of items such as garage kit and adult video games (a major earner which kept Gainax afloat on occasion, though they were sometimes banned).


title: Gainax

text: In 1995, Gainax produced perhaps their best known series, the commercially successful and critically lauded "Neon Genesis Evangelion". In the wake of "Evangelion<nowiki>'s</nowiki>" success, however, Gainax was audited by the National Tax Agency at the urging of the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau on suspicion of committing tax evasion on the massive profits accruing from various "Evangelion" properties. It was later revealed that Gainax had concealed 1.56 billion yen worth of income (thereby failing to pay 560 million yen due in corporate taxes) which it had earned between the release of "Evangelion" and July 1997 by paying closely related companies various large fees, ostensibly to pay for animation expenses, but then immediately withdrawing 90% of the sums from the other company's accounts as cash and storing it in safe deposit boxes (leaving 10% as a reward for the other company's assistance).


title: Gainax

text: Gainax president Takeshi Sawamura and tax accountant Yoshikatsu Iwasaki were arrested on July 13, 1999, and later jailed for accounting fraud. Yasuhiro Takeda later defended Sawamura's actions as being a reaction to Gainax's perpetually precarious finances and the shaky accounting procedures internally:


title: Gainax

text: Sawamura understood our financial situation better than anyone, so when "Evangelion" took off and the money really started rolling in, he saw it as possibly our one and only opportunity to set something aside for the future. I guess he was vulnerable to temptation at that point, because no one knew how long the "Evangelion" goose would keep laying golden eggs. I don't think he purposely set out with the goal of evading taxes. It was more that our level of accounting knowledge wasn't up to the task of dealing with revenues on such a large scale.


title: Gainax

text: In 2004, Gainax marked their 20th anniversary with the production of "Diebuster", the sequel to "Gunbuster". Gainax's most recent successes on television have been the popular anime series "Gurren Lagann" (2007) and "Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt" (2010). In August 2011, Gainax was sued by A.D. Vision, which claimed Gainax's refusal to accept an option payment for the perpetual live-action rights to "Evangelion" was a breach of contract and had resulted in losing an opportunity to produce the film with a major studio. A.D. Vision has asked to be awarded the live-action rights to "Evangelion" and any accruing legal fees.


title: Gainax

text: In 2012, Gainax announced it would be producing its first live-action television series, EA's Rock, with director Nobuhiro Yamashita. At the 2013 Tokyo Anime Fair, Gainax announced that they would be making once-dead "Blue Uru" film with Hiroyuki Yamaga as the director and screenwriter and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto as the character designer. In March 2015, a new studio and museum were opened in Miharu, Fukushima, with the studio named Fukushima Gainax.


title: Gainax

text: In 2016, Gainax was sued by Studio Khara for 100 million yen in unpaid royalties from an agreement that Khara would earn royalties from income received on works and properties that founder Hideaki Anno had worked on. The suit alleged that Gainax delayed on paying royalties and incurred a large debt with Khara, which had loaned 100 million yen in August 2014, but had yet to receive payment on the loan. In 2017 the suit was ruled on by a judge at the Tokyo District Court which ordered Gainax to pay the full amount in debt owed to Khara. Further, it was reported that Gainax was not expected to appeal the ruling. Gainax President, Hiroyuki Yamaga posted a public apology on the Gainax website stating the company was now undergoing restructuring. To date, Anno claims nobody from Gainax has contacted him personally with any kind of apology or explanation.


title: Gainax

text: In August 2018, it was announced that Fukushima Gainax had been acquired by Kinoshita Group Holdings on July 26, making it Kinoshita's new subsidiary. Fukushima Gainax changed its studio name to Gaina and relocated to Koganei, Tokyo on August 9. In December 2019, representative director Tomohiro Maki was arrested on allegations of quasi-forcible indecency on an aspiring voice actress. Maki had been appointed representative director in October, but had been a board director of the company since 2015 and previously served as head of Gainax International, a separate company that trained voice actors and other talents, at the time of the alleged incidents.


title: Gainax

text: In February 2020, Yasuhiro Kamimura (Groundworks representative director) was appointed the company's new representative director and a new board of directors was hired on to the company with Yuko Takaishi (Kadokawa Anime Business Department Anime Production Division head), Atsushi Moriyama (King Records Rights Division senior operating officer), and Yoshiki Usa (Trigger representative director vice president) being the ones chosen to be at the board. In December 2020, it was reported that Tomohiro Maki has been sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for committing indecent acts.


title: Gainax

text: Gainax had some involvement with "K.O. Beast" directed by Hiroshi Negishi. It teamed with other groups to create various works, such as a 1987 promotional video for the song "Marionette" by Boøwy and the 2006 Momoko-based "Gainax Girls" fashion dolls created in collaboration with a Japanese fashion doll. Gainax also collaborated with Game Arts in 1992, resulting in the video game "Alisia Dragoon". In 2004, Gainax penned "Melody of Oblivion" for J.C.Staff. Gainax has also produced a number of computer games, including a strip mahjong game featuring "Evangelion" characters and its most famous, the "Princess Maker" series (later adapted as "Puchi Puri Yūshi"). It collaborated with Saudi Arabian media content company ARiNAT on a three-minute anime trailer titled "Desert Knight" (Sabaku no Kishi), which debuted at the "ANI:ME" Japanese pop culture festival in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Gainax also created the "Mahoromatic Digital Maiden" 1 - 3 PC game series in 1998 which allowed Konami to publish the PS2 game exclusive "Mahoromatic" in Japan that is lesser known to the public.


title: Security (finance)

text: A security is a tradable financial asset. The term commonly refers to any form of financial instrument, but its legal definition varies by jurisdiction. In some countries and languages people commonly use the term "security" to refer to any form of financial instrument, even though the underlying legal and regulatory regime may not have such a broad definition. In some jurisdictions the term specifically excludes financial instruments other than equities and Fixed income instruments. In some jurisdictions it includes some instruments that are close to equities and fixed income, e.g., equity warrants.


title: Security (finance)

text: Securities may be represented by a certificate or, more typically, they may be "non-certificated", that is in electronic (dematerialized) or "book entry only" form. Certificates may be "bearer", meaning they entitle the holder to rights under the security merely by holding the security, or "registered", meaning they entitle the holder to rights only if they appear on a security register maintained by the issuer or an intermediary. They include shares of corporate stock or mutual funds, bonds issued by corporations or governmental agencies, stock options or other options, limited partnership units, and various other formal investment instruments that are negotiable and fungible.


title: Security (finance)

text: In the United Kingdom, the Financial Conduct Authority functions as the national competent authority for the regulation of financial markets; the definition in its "Handbook" of the term "security" applies only to equities, debentures, alternative debentures, government and public securities, warrants, certificates representing certain securities, units, stakeholder pension schemes, personal pension schemes, rights to or interests in investments, and anything that may be admitted to the Official List.


title: Security (finance)

text: In the United States, a "security" is a tradable financial asset of any kind. Securities can be broadly categorized into:


title: Security (finance)

text: The company or other entity issuing the security is called the issuer. A country's regulatory structure determines what qualifies as a security. For example, private investment pools may have some features of securities, but they may not be registered or regulated as such if they meet various restrictions.


title: Security (finance)

text: Securities are the traditional method that commercial enterprises use to raise new capital. They may offer an attractive alternative to bank loans - depending on their pricing and market demand for particular characteristics. A disadvantage of bank loans as a source of financing is that the bank may seek a measure of protection against default by the borrower via extensive financial covenants. Through securities, capital is provided by investors who purchase the securities upon their initial issuance. In a similar way, a government may issue securities when it chooses to increase government debt.


title: Security (finance)

text: Debt securities may be called debentures, bonds, deposits, notes or commercial paper depending on their maturity, collateral and other characteristics. The holder of a debt security is typically entitled to the payment of principal and interest, together with other contractual rights under the terms of the issue, such as the right to receive certain information. Debt securities are generally issued for a fixed term and redeemable by the issuer at the end of that term. Debt securities may be protected by collateral or may be unsecured, and, if they are unsecured, may be contractually "senior" to other unsecured debt meaning their holders would have a priority in a bankruptcy of the issuer. Debt that is not senior is "subordinated".


title: Security (finance)

text: Corporate bonds represent the debt of commercial or industrial entities. Debentures have a long maturity, typically at least ten years, whereas notes have a shorter maturity. Commercial paper is a simple form of debt security that essentially represents a post-dated cheque with a maturity of not more than 270 days.


title: Security (finance)

text: Money market instruments are short term debt instruments that may have characteristics of deposit accounts, such as certificates of deposit, Accelerated Return Notes (ARN), and certain bills of exchange. They are highly liquid and are sometimes referred to as "near cash". Commercial paper is also often highly liquid.


title: Security (finance)

text: Euro debt securities are securities issued internationally outside their domestic market in a denomination different from that of the issuer's domicile. They include eurobonds and euronotes. Eurobonds are characteristically underwritten, and not secured, and interest is paid gross. A euronote may take the form of euro-commercial paper (ECP) or euro-certificates of deposit.


title: Security (finance)

text: Government bonds are medium or long term debt securities issued by sovereign governments or their agencies. Typically they carry a lower rate of interest than corporate bonds, and serve as a source of finance for governments. U.S. federal government bonds are called "treasuries." Because of their liquidity and perceived low risk, treasuries are used to manage the money supply in the open market operations of non-US central banks.


title: Security (finance)

text: Sub-sovereign government bonds, known in the U.S. as municipal bonds, represent the debt of state, provincial, territorial, municipal or other governmental units other than sovereign governments.


title: Security (finance)

text: Supranational bonds represent the debt of international organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, regional multilateral development banks and others.


title: Security (finance)

text: An equity security is a share of equity interest in an entity such as the capital stock of a company, trust or partnership. The most common form of equity interest is common stock, although preferred equity is also a form of capital stock. The holder of an equity is a shareholder, owning a share, or fractional part of the issuer. Unlike debt securities, which typically require regular payments (interest) to the holder, equity securities are not entitled to any payment. In bankruptcy, they share only in the residual interest of the issuer after all obligations have been paid out to creditors. However, equity generally entitles the holder to a pro rata portion of control of the company, meaning that a holder of a majority of the equity is usually entitled to control the issuer. Equity also enjoys the right to profits and capital gain, whereas holders of debt securities receive only interest and repayment of principal regardless of how well the issuer performs financially. Furthermore, debt securities do not have voting rights outside of bankruptcy. In other words, equity holders are entitled to the "upside" of the business and to control the business.


title: Security (finance)

text: Preference shares form an intermediate class of security between equities and debt. If the issuer is liquidated, preference shareholders have the right to receive interest or a return of capital prior to ordinary shareholders. However, from a legal perspective, preference shares are capital stocks and therefore may entitle the holders to some degree of control depending on whether they carry voting rights.


title: Security (finance)

text: Convertibles are bonds or preferred stocks that can be converted, at the election of the holder of the convertibles, into the ordinary shares of the issuing company. The convertibility, however, may be forced if the convertible is a callable bond, and the issuer calls the bond. The bondholder has about 1 month to convert it, or the company will call the bond by giving the holder the call price, which may be less than the value of the converted stock. This is referred to as a forced conversion.


title: Security (finance)

text: Equity warrants are options issued by the company that allow the holder of the warrant to purchase a specific number of shares at a specified price within a specified time. They are often issued together with bonds or existing equities, and are, sometimes, detachable from them and separately tradeable. When the holder of the warrant exercises it, he pays the money directly to the company, and the company issues new shares to the holder.


title: Security (finance)

text: Warrants, like other convertible securities, increases the number of shares outstanding, and are always accounted for in financial reports as fully diluted earnings per share, which assumes that all warrants and convertibles will be exercised.


title: Security (finance)

text: Investors in securities may be retail, i.e., members of the public investing personally, other than by way of business.


title: Security (finance)

text: In distinction, the greatest part of investment in terms of volume, is wholesale, i.e., by financial institutions acting on their own account, or on behalf of clients.


title: Security (finance)

text: Important institutional investors include investment banks, insurance companies, pension funds and other managed funds.


title: Security (finance)

text: The "wholesaler" is typically an underwriter or a broker-dealer who trades with other broker-dealers, rather than with the retail investor.


title: Security (finance)

text: The traditional economic function of the purchase of securities is investment, with the view to receiving income or achieving capital gain. Debt securities generally offer a higher rate of interest than bank deposits, and equities may offer the prospect of capital growth. Equity investment may also offer control of the business of the issuer. Debt holdings may also offer some measure of control to the investor if the company is a fledgling start-up or an old giant undergoing restructuring. In these cases, if interest payments are missed, the creditors may take control of the company and liquidate it to recover some of their investment.


title: Security (finance)

text: The last decade has seen an enormous growth in the use of securities as collateral. Purchasing securities with borrowed money secured by other securities or cash itself is called "buying on margin". Where A is owed a debt or other obligation by B, A may require B to deliver property rights in securities to A, either at inception (transfer of title) or only in default (non-transfer-of-title institutional). For institutional loans, property rights are not transferred but nevertheless enable A to satisfy its claims in case B fails to make good on its obligations to A or otherwise becomes insolvent. Collateral arrangements are divided into two broad categories, namely security interests and outright collateral transfers. Commonly, commercial banks, investment banks, government agencies and other institutional investors such as mutual funds are significant collateral takers as well as providers. In addition, private parties may utilize stocks or other securities as collateral for portfolio loans in securities lending scenarios.


title: Security (finance)

text: On the consumer level, loans against securities have grown into three distinct groups over the last decade: 1) "Standard Institutional Loans", generally offering low loan-to-value with very strict call and coverage regimens, akin to standard margin loans; 2) "Transfer-of-Title (ToT) Loans", typically provided by private parties where borrower ownership is completely extinguished save for the rights provided in the loan contract; and 3) Non-Transfer-of-Title Credit Line facilities where shares are not sold and they serve as assets in a standard lien-type line of cash credit. Of the three, transfer-of-title loans have fallen into the very high-risk category as the number of providers has dwindled as regulators have launched an industry-wide crackdown on transfer-of-title structures where the private lender may sell or sell short the securities to fund the loan. Institutionally managed consumer securities-based loans on the other hand, draw loan funds from the financial resources of the lending institution, not from the sale of the securities.


title: Security (finance)

text: Collateral and sources of collateral are changing, in 2012 gold became a more acceptable form of collateral. However more recently Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) seen by many as the ugly ducklings of the collateral world have started to become more readily available and acceptable. But in a world where collateral is becoming scarce and efficiency is everything, many of these mallards are proving themselves to be not so ugly after all—many more are veritable swans. The problem, until now, for collateral managers has been deciphering the bad eggs from the good, which proves to be a time-consuming and inefficient task.


title: Security (finance)

text: Public securities markets are either primary or secondary markets. In the primary market, the money for the securities is received by the issuer of the securities from investors, typically in an initial public offering (IPO). In the secondary market, the securities are simply assets held by one investor selling them to another investor, with the money going from one investor to the other.


title: Security (finance)

text: An initial public offering is when a company issues public stock newly to investors, called an "IPO" for short. A company can later issue more new shares, or issue shares that have been previously registered in a shelf registration. These later new issues are also sold in the primary market, but they are not considered to be an IPO but are often called a "secondary offering". Issuers usually retain investment banks to assist them in administering the IPO, obtaining SEC (or other regulatory body) approval of the offering filing, and selling the new issue. When the investment bank buys the entire new issue from the issuer at a discount to resell it at a markup, it is called a firm commitment underwriting. However, if the investment bank considers the risk too great for an underwriting, it may only assent to a best effort agreement, where the investment bank will simply do its best to sell the new issue.


title: Security (finance)

text: For the primary market to thrive, there must be a secondary market, or aftermarket that provides liquidity for the investment security—where holders of securities can sell them to other investors for cash. Otherwise, few people would purchase primary issues, and, thus, companies and governments would be restricted in raising equity capital (money) for their operations. Organized exchanges constitute the main secondary markets. Many smaller issues and most debt securities trade in the decentralized, dealer-based over-the-counter markets.


title: Security (finance)

text: In Europe, the principal trade organization for securities dealers is the International Capital Market Association. In the U.S., the principal trade organization for securities dealers is the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, which is the result of the merger of the Securities Industry Association and the Bond Market Association. The Financial Information Services Division of the Software and Information Industry Association (FISD/SIIA) represents a round-table of market data industry firms, referring to them as Consumers, Exchanges, and Vendors. In India the equivalent organisation is the securities exchange board of India (SEBI).


title: Security (finance)

text: In the primary markets, securities may be offered to the public in a public offer. Alternatively, they may be offered privately to a limited number of qualified persons in a private placement. Sometimes a combination of the two is used. The distinction between the two is important to securities regulation and company law. Privately placed securities are not publicly tradable and may only be bought and sold by sophisticated qualified investors. As a result, the secondary market is not nearly as liquid as it is for public (registered) securities.


title: Security (finance)

text: Securities are often listed in a stock exchange, an organized and officially recognized market on which securities can be bought and sold. Issuers may seek listings for their securities to attract investors, by ensuring there is a liquid and regulated market that investors can buy and sell securities in.


title: Security (finance)

text: Growth in informal electronic trading systems has challenged the traditional business of stock exchanges. Large volumes of securities are also bought and sold "over the counter" (OTC). OTC dealing involves buyers and sellers dealing with each other by telephone or electronically on the basis of prices that are displayed electronically, usually by financial data vendors such as SuperDerivatives, Reuters, Investing.com and Bloomberg.


title: Security (finance)

text: There are also eurosecurities, which are securities that are issued outside their domestic market into more than one jurisdiction. They are generally listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange or admitted to listing in London. The reasons for listing eurobonds include regulatory and tax considerations, as well as the investment restrictions.


title: Security (finance)

text: Securities Services refers to the products and services that are offered to institutional clients that issue, trade, and hold securities. The bank engaged in securities services are usually called a custodian bank. Market players include BNY Mellon, J.P. Morgan, HSBC, Citi, BNP Paribas, Société Générale etc.