Each business day HedgeCo.Net keeps you informed with the top hedge fund industry news, opinion and insight from around the globe. From the latest hedge fund launches, to the impact of regulation, competition, and investor activism - we track the topics and people that make a difference to you.
Newsday – Bernard Madoff’s top lieutenant in his Ponzi scheme is scheduled to plead guilty Tuesday to federal charges in what many legal observers believe is a cooperation deal that could lead to trouble for some major hedge fund operators.
Frank DiPascali Jr., 52, of Bridgewater, N.J., had been a key Madoff aide, working in a closely guarded office on the 17th floor of Manhattan’s Lipstick Building, where the Ponzi scheme operated. It was DiPascali, investigators and defense attorneys said, who dealt with the numerous hedge funds and was involved in mailing myriad false account statements sent to thousands of defrauded clients.
Newsday – A tough-talking President Barack Obama moved yesterday to block the $165 million in bonuses for American International Group executives that prompted a new wave of outrage at corporate America and taxpayer bailouts.
Despite the aggressive approach, it’s unclear whether he can get the payments back. But the White House said it would modify the terms of AIG’s pending $30-billion bailout installment to at least recoup the $165 million the bonuses represent. That wouldn’t rescind the bonuses, just require AIG to account for them differently.
Separately, state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said he will subpoena the names of AIG officials involved and copies of their employment contracts to determine whether the bonuses are legal, given the firm’s weak finances.
Manhattan-based AIG was saved from insolvency by $170 billion in taxpayer-backed loans – and reported a $61.7-billion loss in the fourth quarter last year. It revealed on the weekend that it used more than $90 billion in its federal aid to pay out banks, some of which had received their own U.S. government bailouts.
Newsday – The latest development in the mortgage market fomenting outrage in the streets and condemnation across the media spectrum is the spectacle of rich investors — Wall Street traders, hedge fund operators, even former executives of the detested Countrywide Financial Corp. — buying up delinquent home loans, reworking terms for borrowers, and selling them off to new investors at a handsome profit.
Newsday – Maybe you heard the one about the phony multibillion-dollar Long Island hedge fund that was actually performing a public service.
No? Well, apparently neither did four confidence men, according to federal prosecutors.
The four were convicted yesterday in federal court in Central Islip after walking into a federal sting operation in which they thought they were about to collect $3 billion from a hedge fund. The money was to be used to build what they said was a pipeline through the Russian Republic of Buryatia, prosecutors said.
The unnamed fund was a creation of FBI agents and the Postal Inspection Service, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Miskiewicz said during the seven-day trial.
