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Boston Globe – Secretary of State William F. Galvin is investigating Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.’s relationship with a hedge fund operation that lost $3.3 billion to admitted swindler Bernard L. Madoff.
Galvin, who oversees the state Securities Division, said his office is looking into MassMutual as part of an ongoing probe of investment firms that placed clients’ funds with Madoff. The division is examining whether MassMutual did enough to safeguard its customers’ money.
Springfield-based MassMutual owns Tremont Advisers Inc., a Rye, N.Y., hedge fund firm that sustained the second-biggest loss of all the confessed swindler’s clients.
Boston Globe – Investors of disgraced financier Bernard Madoff have filed 18 lawsuits against Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. in an effort to recoup $3.3 billion that its hedge fund group lost in the scandal. But the Springfield insurer is trying to distance itself from the ordeal and says it has no liability in the matter.
MassMutual maintains that the losses racked up by investors in its hedge fund group, Tremont Group Holdings Inc., are their own – and not the responsibility of the insurance company. Tremont had the second-largest loss among Madoff clients after Fairfield Greenwich Advisors, a New York hedge fund that lost $7.5 billion.
Boston Globe – A Boston law firm has filed a class-action lawsuit against a hedge fund controlled by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. for placing all of the fund’s assets with Bernard Madoff, who is facing life in prison for conducting a massive fraud.
The lead plaintiff is Lawrence J. Rothschild, a Needham businessman who invested about $1.1 million with the Rye Select Broad Market XL Fund, according to the lawsuit, filed yesterday in Massachusetts Superior Court.
The suit alleges that Rye did not explicitly say that it placed all of its assets with Madoff, and that the firm’s parent, Tremont Partners Inc. (also part of MassMutual), ignored red flags about Madoff’s activities.
