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.
Courthouse News Service – The founder and general partner of a $5 billion hedge fund used the company’s CFO as a scapegoat when investors found out he used their money to buy a private Gulfstream jet, the former CFO claims in Federal Court. Perry Gruss claims that Daniel Zwirn, of D.B. Zwirn and Co., told him he had to leave the company so Zwirn could remain ”pearly white” and ”bullet proof.”
Zwirn and Co. once managed more than $5 billion in assets. Gruss claims its founder began to live the life of an ”investment magnate,” including the private jet, ”scores of professional and personal assistants,” and a vacation home on the East End of Long Island.
Is your hedge fund in dire financial straits? Are you totally screwed and now realizing that someone has to take the fall? Has your ponzi scheme enveloped numerous celebrity-endorsed charities benefiting Laotian children with AIDS and been discovered by the SEC?
I’m your man…
I will take the reins of your hedge fund for as long as necessary to establish credibility, then present a dramatic "mea culpa" to the press declaring that my poor decisions have saddled your company with mounds and mounds of "toxic assets" and "ponzi schemery."
Reuters – Steel Partners this week asked a Delaware court to dismiss a lawsuit filed against the hedge fund firm by billionaire investor Carl Icahn, saying he is "looking for a scapegoat" for investment losses that happened as the financial crisis deepened.
Steel Partners said the suit, which claims it committed fraud, has no merit.
The court papers were made public on Tuesday.
Two weeks ago ACF Industries, a railcar component maker closely associated with Icahn, sued Steel Partners in Delaware Chancery Court, saying the fund firm failed to properly inform investors about plans to turn one of its funds into a public company.
Daily Herald- The computer screen on Scott Topping’s desk at Southwest Airlines flickered with row after row of dates and numbers, but they had nothing to do with arrivals and departures. They tracked the price of oil futures for the next several months, and they told a grim tale: No letup in sight from record prices for jet fuel.
"We’re on a one-way street right now," Topping said as he hunched over the screen, shaking his head. It’s Topping’s job to oversee Southwest’s battle to control surging fuel costs. It is the most successful program of its kind in the airline industry.
In the first quarter of this year, Southwest paid $1.98 per gallon for fuel. American Airlines paid $2.73, and United paid $2.83 per gallon in the same period.
