They haven’t said anything yet but I think it’s pretty obvious it’s coming. Yesterday, when the dream team in charge of the two ridiculously named Bear Stearns funds–High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund and High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund– emerged from a Brooklyn courthouse, Matthew Tannin had the shit-eating grin pictured at left on his face. He was happy, of course, that he and his co-conspirator, Ralph Cioffi had gotten off counts of conspiracy, securities and wire fraud, and dodged 20 years each in the big house. Because honestly, even MT didn’t see that coming (you read the e-mails). But mostly, he was psyched to learn that his career as a money manager is not over. People aren’t planning on holding this (apparently baseless) duping of investors stuff against him and his colleague and in fact? Some are pretty impressed with how the dream team conducted their business.
Aram Hong, a juror from Woodside, Queens, said the exchanges between Cioffi and Tannin shown to the jury proved to her that the two men were working “24-7″ to save the funds in the months before they collapsed. She noted a defense exhibit that showed the fund managers were working at 4 a.m.
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Knight Capital Group Chief Executive Officer Thomas Joyce said in a letter to clients yesterday the company is “in good standing” with clearing firms and its broker-dealer units have sufficient capital. Joyce also said the post-tax loss stemming from Knight’s trading error was about $270 million, compared with a previously reported pretax loss of $440 million. The letter comes a week after Knight, one of the biggest market-making firms in the U.S., was driven to the brink of bankruptcy after a technology malfunction spewed orders into the market by mistake. [Bloomberg, earlier]
