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.
The London Free Press – A hedge-fund swindler who faked his own death in an effort to skip out on a 20-year prison term was sentenced yesterday to two extra years.
Federal Judge Kenneth Karas said Samuel Israel III was "thumbing his nose at the system" when he staged a suicide and jumped bail last year rather than do time for taking hundreds of millions from investors in his Stamford, Conn.-based Bayou hedge funds.
New York Daily News – Park Avenue lawyer Marc Dreier was sentenced to 20 years in prison Monday by a judge who scolded prosecutors for wanting to jail him for as long as Ponzi swindler Bernard Madoff.
"Is the government serious about asking for 145 years?" Manhattan Federal Judge Jed Rakoff asked.
"To me, for the government to ask for 145 years is to demean the sentence Judge [Denny] Chin imposed on Mr. Madoff.
Reuters – Dow Jones futures dipped 0.1 percent, S&P 500 futures were down 0.01 percent while Nasdaq futures traded 0.02 percent higher on Monday morning at 4:45 a.m. EDT, pointing to a flat opening for Wall Street’s main equity indexes.
With corporate earnings and economic data calendars virtually void of potentially market-moving events, the focus will be on the sentencing of confessed swindler Bernard Madoff.
At a court hearing due to begin at 10 a.m. EDT, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin is expected by legal observers to sentence Madoff, 71, to an effective life term in prison.
Denver Post – J. Ezra Merkin, a hedge-fund manager who invested billions of dollars of clients’ money with swindler Bernard Madoff, has agreed to relinquish control of his funds to court-appointed trustees.
The attorney general’s office had requested the move in connection with its civil fraud lawsuit accusing Merkin of convincing clients he was managing their money when he was actually funneling $2.4 billion to Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
The deal, which is expected to be approved by a judge Thursday, is not a settlement in the case, the attorney general’s office said.
Boston Globe – The trustee in the bankruptcy case of swindler Bernard L. Madoff has told a hedge fund business owned by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. to return money that it received from Madoff over the past six years.
Responding to a Boston Globe inquiry, bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard confirmed that he had sent a so-called clawback letter to Tremont Group Holdings Inc.
Tremont is among more than 225 former Madoff investors who have received such letters from Picard, on the grounds that the money belonged to other investors, because Madoff never generated any real investment profits. Picard wants to recoup the disbursed funds to have more money to repay investors for their losses. He has threatened to sue anyone who doesn’t return the funds.
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.
Sky News – A US town has edged closer towards clawing back its losses to Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff, securing a court order for £17m in assets.
The town of Fairfield in Connecticut suffered losses of about £28m from its pension fund to what has been called the biggest Ponzi scam in history.
Some 1,500 members who are trying to recover retirement money were granted the order to chase the assets from Madoff’s relatives and business partners.
Times Online – Fairfield Greenwich, the hedge fund manager founded by socialite Walter Noel, became the first fund that invested with disgraced fund manager Bernard Madoff to be charged with fraud.
William Galvin, Massachusett’s Secretary of State, today accused the Connecticut-based fund of lying to investors about it due diligence it did on Madoff’s fund management business.
Fairfield Greenwich was one of the biggest feeder funds to Madoff, enabling the 70-year-old convicted swindler to rip off thousands of people in a $65 billion Ponzi scheme running for at least 20 years.
Reuters – Jailed Bayou hedge fund swindler Samuel Israel pleaded guilty on Monday to jumping bail in an episode in which he faked his own suicide last year in an attempt to avoid going to prison.
Israel’s plea had been delayed several times since August while he underwent medical care. He faces up to 10 years in prison on the bail jumping charge, said Judge Kenneth Karas in U.S. District Court in White Plains, New York.
Israel, 49, was sentenced last April to 20 years for engineering a scam that cheated investors out of about $450 million. The two sentences will run consecutively. Karas scheduled June 24 for the sentencing.
Herald Tribune – A federal judge extended a freeze on the assets of Sarasota’s Arthur G. Nadel on Tuesday, but failed to include other partners — a measure some investors with the accused hedge fund swindler have been pushing for aggressively because Nadel shared $95.5 million in incentive fees with other Scoop Management Inc. principals.
Nadel did not contest U.S. District Judge Richard A. Lazzara’s order freezing personal and business bank accounts, property and other assets Nadel controls solely or with others, so a hearing scheduled for today was canceled.
Investors like Fort Lauderdale’s Louis Paolino Jr., who is out $5.8 million since the Jan. 14 implosion of the six funds Nadel managed, had hoped the hearing might shed light on why the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was not seeking to include Nadel partners Neil or Chris Moody in the freeze.
New York Daily News – A federal judge charged with slapping his wife hired a big shot defense attorney as he faces a misdemeanor charge that could land him in the clink.
James Peck, 63, the bankruptcy judge overseeing the breakup of Lehman Brothers, hired Barry Bohrer, a prominent criminal defense lawyer whose clients have included Sam Israel, the hedge fund swindler who went on the lam last summer after faking his own suicide to avoid a 20-year jail term.
Peck, who was briefly assigned to handle the Bernard Madoff bankruptcy until he recused himself in December, told cops when they came to his Park Ave. apartment Saturday afternoon that "I was defending myself."
Reuters UK – Hedge funds suffered their worst full-year loss ever in 2008 but their decline was still less steep than the 38 percent drop for the average stock mutual fund, data released on Thursday showed.
The average hedge fund lost 19.2 percent last year according to data from New York-based consultants the Hennessee Group and 18.30 percent according to data from Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research HFR.L.
Funds of hedge funds, which promise to build a portfolio of individual hedge funds to spread the risk, fared the worst of all, losing 19.97 percent, HFR said, citing exposure to accused financial swindler Bernard Madoff as a major reason for the losses.
