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.
New York Daily News – State Controller Thomas DiNapoli is booting 10 hedge fund managers from doing business with New York’s scandal-scarred $122 billion pension fund, the Daily News has learned.
Four of the 10 firms were listed, but not charged, in an indictment the state attorney general’s office brought against two top associates to former Controller Alan Hevesi.
The four are Consulting Services Group, HFV Management, Olympia Capital Management and Pequot Capital Management.
Napa Valley Register – The 2009 Festival del Sole will proceed in July as planned despite its founder’s guilty plea to securities fraud.
Hedge fund executive Barrett Wissman has pleaded guilty to felony securities fraud and is cooperating with New York State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo’s investigation of corruption at the New York State pension fund, according to numerous news reports.
A Dallas business associate of the Hunt family — the wealthy Texas oil family that owns the Kansas City Chiefs football team
New York Times – A hedge fund executive has pleaded guilty to securities fraud and is cooperating with New York State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo’s investigation of corruption at the state pension fund, according to court records unsealed in Manhattan on Tuesday.
Barrett Wissman, a Dallas business associate of the Hunt family, is the first investment executive to be implicated in the inquiry and will pay $12 million over several years as part of a settlement under his felony plea, people with knowledge of the investigation said.
WSWS – New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Monday charged J. Ezra Merkin, a multi-millionaire hedge fund manager and former chairman of GMAC Financial Services, the financial arm of General Motors, with bilking investors out of $2.4 billion by funneling their money, without their knowledge, to convicted Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff.
According to the civil complaint filed by Cuomo with the New York Supreme Court, Merkin collected $470 million in management and incentive fees over a fifteen-year period by claiming to be carefully managing the money his clients invested in his three hedge funds, while funneling the bulk of the funds to Madoff’s operation.
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.
New York Daily News - Jacob Ezra Merkin was once revered as a wizard of Wall Street, an angel of charity and a lion of Judaic studies.
Now he has earned infamy as a destroyer of wealth, a menace to philanthropy, a pariah in some synagogues and a target of a probe by the state attorney general’s office.
A single unforgivable deed capsized his fortune, reputation and social standing overnight: He embraced a false prophet of profit named Bernard Madoff.
