Globe and Mail- A group of prominent American hedge funds have failed to get a $6-billion (U.S.) lawsuit against them by Prem Watsa’s Fairfax Financial thrown out of U.S. court.
New Jersey Superior Court Judge Deanne Wilson ruled in Fairfax’s favour during an unusually long 10-hour Friday hearing on Sept. 7. She dismissed 10 motions to dismiss that were launched by the defendants – eight hedge fund firms and a group of well-known money managers that includes Jim Chanos, Steven Cohen, Daniel Loeb, David Rocker and Adam Sender, sources say. The court order has not been put into writing yet and has not yet been reported in the media.
The bizarre case of Fairfax versus an alleged cabal of short-selling hedge funds and a mysterious freelance financial analyst named Spyro Contogouris goes back to July, 2006. But it recently caught the attention of Bloomberg Markets, a glossy magazine published by Bloomberg News. The October issue – which goes to virtually every Bloomberg customer worldwide – features an eight-page, cloak-and-dagger story of the Fairfax/hedge fund fight.
Bloomberg writer Anthony Effinger said the court case “raises questions about the integrity of securities research four years after several Wall Street firms settled claims that their analysts issued biased reports to win investment banking business. Now some unaffiliated analysts are allegedly being corrupted by deep-pocketed hedge funds.”
