October 23, 2021
Bonus Watch '20 (And Beyond?): Local Man Facing Asset Freeze, Lawsuits Over Debts Doing So Well He Needs No Bonus

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Bonus Watch '20 (And Beyond?): Local Man Facing Asset Freeze, Lawsuits Over Debts Doing So Well He Needs No Bonus

Phil Falcone is really just disappointed in himself and not at all making a desperate gambit to keep his job.
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Last month, we expressed concern about the health and well-being of a beloved member of the Falcone family. Specifically, how porcine piano-player Wilbur was weathering what appeared to be some lean times, what with the $30 million in late tax payments and sale of Wilbur’s old East 67 Street digs and alleged refusal to turn over collateral and asset freeze over an alleged failure to pay some lawyers and alarming breakdowns on the parts of other members of the family. More specifically, had the impoverished and famished Falcones killed and eaten her?

Apparently, we needn’t have been at all concerned at all, because the head of the Falcone household, Phil, is doing so well financially that he’s forgoing his bonus until he can triple the share price of the his post-hedge fund career project. And we know this because Phil has told us in a press release addressing the risible effort to get him fired from his now bonus-less job, including a not-at-all desperate request for those shareholders—who must be really be too few to mention, and certainly too few to actually threaten Falcone’s position, but whose support Falcone still feels compelled to seek in such a financially selfless way on account of his boundless conscientiousness and goodwill—who had cast a purely symbolic protest vote for a slate of directors whose sole, malicious purpose is to remove Falcone from office, to revoke that vote.

“I have voluntarily committed to forgo any potential bonus payments I may be eligible to be rewarded in respect of 2020 performance or any future year performance until HC2 stock reaches an average trading price of at least $7.50 per share, the stock price when we completed our secondary offering, over a 30 day period. I am making this change because I am committed to driving stockholder value, my belief in the value of HC2’s underlying assets, and my ability to execute our strategy. I also hope this voluntary commitment helps to silence the tremendous amount of misinformation spread by Percy Rockdale around my past compensation. This compensation structure makes my commitment to align my interests with those of our stockholders absolutely clear,” stated Mr. Falcone.

HC2 Holdings CEO Phil Falcone Voluntarily Commits to Forgo Bonus Until HC2 Stock Price Reaches $7.50 [press release]

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From outward appearances, the past couple years have been a stressful time for Phil Falcone. After making billions of dollars for himself and for his investors on subprime, the Harbinger Capital Partners founder provoked the ire of many a client by tying up a good chunk of their money in a wireless start-up called LightSquared (a company the Federal Communications Commission is no fan of, due to the fact that it reportedly interferes with GPS devices used on land, sea, and in outer space), by borrowing $113 million from a gated fund in order to pay personal taxes, and by only allowing certain investors (Goldman Sachs) to get out while freezing redemptions for others and then telling them they could leave if they found some else to pick up their stake. Assets under management at Harbinger have dropped $23 billion, from a peak of $26 billion. For a variety of reasons, the Securities and Exchange commission wants to see him banned from the industry. A worried Bloomberg News reporter recently revealed he has a problem with pit stains ("[his] shirt appeared darker under the arms in his office last month"), which wouldn't pose an issue were his shirt supply not dwindling rapidly ("One place Falcone is visiting less frequently is Domenico Vacca, the New York boutique where suits retail for $3,900 and shirts $490, according to a person with knowledge of his purchases. He orders every four or five months [now] compared with every two or three months between 2006 and 2009"). For all these reasons and more (like, say, a sensitive and highly-strung pig who is not happy), some people might assume that Falcone would at best be in deep contemplative mode regarding how things got this far at worst be freaking the fuck out, particularly over the possibilities that 1) the SEC is going to file civil fraud charges and 2) if LightSquared doesn't pan out, he's going to lose a whole lot of money. Those people, however, would be wrong. Not only is he not at all worried that his passion project won't work out ( “I am not losing sleep on this -- why would I lose sleep?” he asked Bloomberg), but he dares anyone to come up with a reason for why he's not going to make $20+ billion on this thing. “This is not for the faint of heart,” Falcone said. “I’ve never looked at it as having $4 billion or $25 billion as defining Philip Falcone. But who’s to say I won’t get back to $25 billion?” What? It could happened. You don't know. Falcone Waits for Icahn Doubling Down on Network [Bloomberg]

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To put it lightly, the last couple years have been a rather dark time for Phil Falcone. Though his woes are too numerous to mention in full, they include: the adversity he's faced in getting people to believe in LightSquared; his unbelievably pissy investors, who still aren't over the time he borrowed $113 million from a gated fund to pay personal taxes, or offered to pay out redemptions in illiquid LightSquared equity; the Securities and Exchange Commission, which wants him banned from the industry for life; the woman who once offered a respite from it all, who now won't even come out of her room when she knows he's home; and, of course, the plunging returns in his once highly profitable hedge fund. It would be enough to make a grown man say 'Fuck, it. I'm done.' Put a few things in a sack, tie it to the blade of a hockey stick, and hitchhike back to Minnesota. But Phil didn't do that and now? After a merciless storm of shit that felt like it would never ease up? After long days of investors and regulators breathing down his neck and nights of having to pound on the front door because he was accidentally purposely locked out of the house? The tide feels like it's turning for Philip Falcone. Beleaguered hedge fund honcho Phil Falcone’s big bet on his own publicly traded entity, Harbinger Group, is helping to lift his troubled hedge fund, Harbinger Capital Management, out of the deep end. Falcone’s flagship fund posted returns of 10.6 percent in July and a whopping 28 percent gain in June. Of course, he's still down 5.8 percent year-to-date, and the the director of the SEC's division of enforcement wants hedge fund graduate schools to use Harbinger as a case study during the unit on "how to operate a hedge fund unlawfully," but tonight? Tonight he tells Lisa to treat herself to something nice. Tonight he tells Wilbur to pull the baby grand out of the closet, where it's sat untouched for months. Tonight his key works in the lock. Tonight we dance. Phil Helps Himself [NYP]

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Remember the time Harbinger Capital Partners founder Phil Falcone was a little short on cash, and decided to "borrow" $113 million from a fund in which redemptions had been suspended in order to pay personal taxes? Unfortunately for Big P, the SEC does. (The regulator also recalls he time he allegedly played favorites with Goldman and allegedly manipulated some markets.) Philip Falcone, the billionaire founder of Harbinger Capital Partners LLC, faces a lawsuit from U.S. regulators as soon as this week over claims he improperly borrowed client funds to pay his taxes and gave preferential treatment to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., according to two people familiar with the matter. Falcone, 49, may also face a market manipulation claim related to trading in bonds of MAAX Holdings Inc., said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter isn’t public. The Securities and Exchange Commission voted to authorize enforcement staff to file the case, the people said. While perhaps not the best news Falcone has received in a while, it likely does not come as a surprise, as the SEC has been talking about the aforementioned offenses since last December (when they tried to get him banned from the securities industry). Either way, Phil, who should probably just not going home tonight unless he wants an earful, is planning to "contest to the suit." SEC Said To Authorize Lawsuit Against Harbinger’s Falcone [Bloomberg]