“I’m happy to do it because I think it’s going to demonstrate my innocence,” Kinnucan said of the request for information. Will he be happy with all the other fun stuff the feds likely have in store for him after he refused to wear a wire while conversing with SAC Capital, notified his clients of the investigations, and instead of choosing to put a lid on it, pimped his story out to the highest bidder(s)? Stay tuned!
Archive for December 2010
Say what you will about Canada but their Ponzi scheming set is willing to tread where its more southern counterparts have not. Yeah, we have big number schemes but no one really thinks outside the box. Like pigeon-farming scams. Have we ever had one of those? No, we just feed the damn things rather than think about exploiting them for cash.
An Ontario man accused in an alleged $1-million pigeon breeding scheme has been charged with fraud and violations of bankruptcy laws. Arlan Galbraith, the 62-year-old owner of Pigeon King International, was arrested Wednesday after surrendering to police in Kitchener. Galbraith, from Cochrane, Ont., is charged with one count of fraud over $5,000 and four counts under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. Police allege Galbraith defrauded people in Canada and the United States out of a total of $1 million between 2004 and 2008. It’s estimated about 1,000 people invested a total of $20 million in the purchase of pigeons while allegedly being promised guaranteed financial returns.
You want to hear more, right? Some sort of business plan at least. Continue reading »
$$$ Matthew Goldstein: Email of analyst visited by FBI went to big players [Reuters]
$$$ Paolo Pellegrini: “I’m stepping back, I’m trying to put together a more stable team, focusing on more quantitative types of disciplines. I think that there is so much arbitrary input in the investment process at this point, given all of the regulatory and central bank actions, that it is difficult to have a linear process of thinking about the world and how to make money. It’s sort of more complicated than that—there is a lot of unpredictable externality from decisions that are a combination of personal ideology of different players and political realities of different points of time.” [Bloomberg TV]
$$$ James Gorman: “We’re the prettiest girl at the dance.” [The Economist] Continue reading »
Earlier this week, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange casually mentioned that his next target will be “a large US bank,” with a dump so damning it could “take down” a firm “or two.” As we and other have pointed out, it’s difficult to conceive of any documents Mr. Assange could leak that would “expose” or even embarrass BAC (or whatever US bank he’s going after) in a way that it hasn’t already embarrassed itself and lived to tell the tale. And on Tuesday, executives said they didn’t have any “indication,” they were the target. Still, though, you can never be too careful when it comes to Mr. Dribbles, which is why the bank has apparently distributed .44 Magnums to its legal team. Continue reading »
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Private Equity
Shamrock Capital Private Equity Exec Identifies Latest Takeover Target: Some Sweet Jos A. Bank Thread
By Bess LevinThe last time Ray Lopez bought a suit, Lehman Brothers was still standing. Now the managing partner at Greensboro, North Carolina, private equity firm Shamrock Capital Partners is ready to go wardrobe shopping again. Lopez, 43, plans to drop as much as $1,500 at Jos. A. Bank on two pinstriped suits, white dress shirts, and a handful of ties: “I feel more comfortable about the economy. Plus I’m seeing these big discounts everywhere.” [Bloomberg, not available yet]
And it’ll take $6 billion, in non-consecutive, unmarked bills to make this allegation go away. Continue reading »
Dealbreaker faithful, an exciting opportunity is upon us. Does everyone remember money manager Albert Hsu? To refresh, the co-founder of fund of funds Anchor Point Capital went away in 2007 after it was revealed that he went on to a site called CollarMe.com and posing as his ex-mistress, placed an ad seeking an undesired (on her part) “real-life abduction and rape scene,” after she told them they should see other people. Just before he began serving his two and half year sentence, Hsu told the Stamford Advocate that he hoped to return to investing after being released from prison. At the time, we ran a poll asking if, given a chance to put money with a recently paroled sex offender, you would sign up. Now that the opportunity has presented itself, I’d like to revisit that question.
For the purposes of due diligence, a few more details about Hsu:
* His new venture is called Tao Investments and was founded in May (he’s also got a consulting biz on the side, catering to “clients i need of professional investment management experience”)
* The equity options strategy is up 15% year-to-date
* He gets that there are some trust issues to work through, telling FINalternatives that on account of the whole attempting to have his lady friend raped and murdered thing, he faces “some credibility issues” Continue reading »
What Could Paul Tudor Jones Possibly Have Planned For His Christmas Spectacular This Year?
By Bess LevinAs many of you may be aware, some of us intimately, each year Paul Tudor Jones holds a Christmas spectacular on his front lawn in Greenwich, Connecticut. Open to the public, it’s become a favorite event for children and adults of all ages, far and wide. After being forced to cancel his Halloween extravaganza this year, as a result of neighbors who lack any heart, some worried that PTJ’s Christmas show would suffer the same fate. Well worry no longer. This thing is on, and that’s not all. Continue reading »
Former Deutsche Bank Trader Greg Lippmann Working “Harder” But Not “Longer” At Libre Max
By Bess LevinApparently at his new firm, Lippman is able to clock out earlier because he’s focused on “one thing and one thing only, which is making money.” At Deutsche Bank, there were a lot of other responsibilities that sucked up his time, like coddling Germans and updating his Sushi Spreadsheet. Continue reading »
The last month or so has not been the best of times for Phil Falcone. Harbinger Capital’s flagship is down, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone and some others have pulled their money, investors have been giving him shit for borrowing $113 million from one of his funds (where redemptions had been frozen) in order to pay personal taxes, he had to put up his art as collateral to borrow even more cash (for what, it’s unclear), he’s being investigated by the SEC and every time he drives down the road he just wants to jerk the wheel into a god damn bridge abutment.
First, though, he’d like to put some rumors to bed, and in a profile with the Times yesterday, did just that.
* On the hideous suggestion he’s got a liquidity problem:
Mr. Falcone has been selling investments. He has unloaded stakes in Citigroup and The New York Times Company and a $650 million investment in Inmarsat, a British satellite company. All of this has led to speculation in the hedge fund community that Mr. Falcone and his firm are confronting a cash squeeze. If more investors withdraw money, the whispers go, Mr. Falcone could be in trouble. Nonsense, said Mr. Falcone in an interview in his office. “The last thing I’m thinking about in the morning is whether I have a cash-flow problem,” he says.
* On people not getting that he loaned himself investor money because he really needed it and not because he was just dicking around.:
A little more than a year ago, Mr. Falcone took a $113 million personal loan from the fund, a move that was vetted by his lawyers, he said. Mr. Falcone said a big chunk of his personal wealth is tied up in his own funds. “It’s not like I have $113 million in my checking account,” he said, chuckling.
