Bruce McMahan

  • 02 Nov 2006 at 12:55 PM
  • Argent

Duke Brothers Morgan Stanley to Corner the Orange Juice Smog market?

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[Reporting live from the trenches of Wall Street, we bring you the first dispatch from DealBreaker special correspondent Paul Paftinos.]
In what is expected to become a growing trend, as we see political power shifting from the Anti-Kyoto policy of the Bush/Special-Interest coalition and individual states making efforts to begin adhering to Kyoto-like controls regardless of existing federal standards, Morgan Stanley has followed rivals such as Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas by throwing its hat in the ring of the burgeoning CO2 Emissions Trading market.
carboncredit.jpgUnlike Goldman though, which simply stuck its toes in the water by lightly trading on the European Trading Scheme, (ETS) which is currently the most advanced platform to trade the new commodity (CO2 Emission Credits), Morgan has instead announced its intention to spend an unparalleled $3 Billion, which “will be used to buy carbon credits in the various emissions trading schemes around the world.”

About 90 per cent of the bank’s investment will be used to buy carbon credits in the various emissions trading schemes around the world. The European Union has the most advanced carbon emissions trading market, but a global informal carbon emissions market may be developing with schemes in the US, Japan and Australia.
Morgan Stanley will invest the remainder in energy projects that generate lower emissions than conventional energy projects and earn emission credits that can in turn be sold in the various emission schemes.

2.7 Billion is going to buy Morgan a lot of dirty air. And considering there is a fixed amount of credits allocated by member nations, could this be construed as an early attempt to corner the smog market? (cough)
Global push to cut greenhouse emissions [Financial Times]
The Big Money Pouring into Carbon Trading [Financial Times]

The Hedge Fund Guy Who Reportedly Married His Daughter, Revisited

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bruce_mcmahan.jpgRemember Bruce McMahan? A few weeks ago we pointed you to the story in the Broward Palm-Beach New Times detailing allegations that high-flying hedge fund manager Bruce McMahan had married his daughter. Well now the New Times is back, responding the denials from McMahan and his family with even more evidence that he really did marry his adult daughter.
The most disturbing/entertaining part of the new story is the New Times recounting of some rather odd defenses of the family. We won’t spoil it by summarizing. Here’s the details from the New Times.

But getting back to our question: What was it about Linda that allowed her to participate in this kind of behavior?
Oddly, a possible answer to that question may have come from Linda’s half-sister, Heather McMahan, who jumped to the defense of her family’s honor in a story in the New York Post last week.

“[Linda] was a very sexual person, like most McMahans tend to be. We have a pretty strong libido — all of us,” Heather told the Post in a story in which she went on to describe her beloved half sis as a sexual freak show. At a party, for example, Heather said that Linda turned a goodbye peck into a Girls Gone Wild moment.
“She put her hands on both my cheeks and goes right for my mouth,” Heather told the Post. “I pulled back, and she said: ‘Wait a minute. If you don’t let me kiss you on the lips, how are you going to let me kiss you down there again?’”

Now, keep in mind Heather told these things to the Post because she wanted to convince the American public that Linda and her father would never, ever engage in an incestuous relationship.
Let’s break down Heather’s reasoning: Heather assures us that Linda would never sleep with Dad — and she knows this how? Because Linda made sexual come-ons to her own half sister.
I guess that’s the kind of logic that makes sense only in families who control more money than the gross national product of Uganda.

There are more pictures of the alleged marriage and other gross-out, weirdo details at the New Times, so be sure the read the whole thing.

McMahan Family Values [Broward-Palm Beach New Times]

  • 27 Sep 2006 at 1:48 PM
  • Argent

Hedge Fund Manager Reportedly Married His Daughter

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bruce_mcmahan.jpgWhen we last heard of Bruce McMahan, the president and CEO of the Argent funds, he was buying a watch that once belonged to Horatio Alger. Just another story of a hedge fund guy buying collectible art and artifacts. Kind of boring.
It turns out that there was a bit more to McMahan. Or less. McMahan married his 35-year-old daugher in 2004, according to a report in the Broward-Palm Beach New Times. The report says the fund manager initially seduced his daughter while showing her a video of Braveheart.

For more than a year, attorneys have been kept busy in Miami, New York, Mississippi, and San Diego with the fallout over the breakup of McMahan and Linda in five lawsuits involving not only father and daughter but also their legal spouses, as well as Linda’s current boyfriend and soon-to-be father of her child. Details of McMahan and Linda’s extraordinary wedding at Westminster Abbey and their years as lovers come from court documents as well as Linda’s videotaped deposition, which New Times has made available on its website, browardpalmbeach.com.
In court papers, McMahan denies that he ever had a sexual affair with his daughter. But he doesn’t explain how his and Linda’s DNA turned up on a vibrator that Linda’s husband uncovered in her luggage. McMahan also hints that Linda may not be his biological daughter, despite a DNA test he paid for showing with 99.7 percent probability that he is her father.

Ugh. More details are available in the full New Times story. Lots more. Disgusting details. Including court documents, wedding photos and videos. Too disgusting for us to summarize this early in the day. The media news and gossip website Gawker, however, picked up on one too-bizzare-to-be-true-but-true-nonetheless detail:

When Ewell made allegations in her divorce that McMahan had treated her cruelly, McMahan countersued and accused Ewell of engaging in affairs and “attempting to seduce mutual friends and associates,” according to an appellate opinion in the case. Ewell tells New Times that one of those men was billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who has been much in the news lately for allegedly hiring underaged women to strip topless and massage him at his Palm Beach mansion. At the time, in the early 1980s, McMahan and Epstein worked together at Bear Stearns in New York. Epstein didn’t return a request for comment.
jeffreyepstein1.jpg“Jeffrey Epstein worked with [McMahan]. He was, let’s just say, in the divorce proceedings,” she says. “I was asked to stop by Jeffrey’s apartment to pick up some papers for Bruce. It didn’t feel right, so I didn’t even go in. I stood outside the door. And then, later, Jeff said I propositioned him. There were always allegations I was having to fight.

Emphasis obviously added. McMahan and Epstein worked together? Okay. We’ve got to ask. What the fuck were they putting in the water cooler at Bear Stearns?
The Argent funds manage around $3 billion in assets and operates our of offices in Connecticut (and four other US states), Bermuda, Dubai, Mumbai and London. Reports say the company has approximately 1,200 investors, mostly from outside the US.

Daddy’s Girl: Fisher Island millionaire Bruce McMahan loved his daughter so much, he married her [Broward-Palm Beach New Times via Gawker]