Posts belonging to Category Citigroup Hedge Funds



Hedge Fund Investments – Look Before You Leap

 

InvestmentNews recently published a lengthy excerpt from Simon Lack’s book entitled “The Hedge Fund Mirage: The illusion of Big Money and Why It’s Too Good to be True” (“Hedge funds benefit insiders only”).  Mr. Lack studied the matter and concluded that the appeal of hedge funds has no sensible basis.  While there are occasional shooting […]

Today’s ‘Alternative Investments’ Resemble ‘Limited Partnerships’ of the Past

 

Wall Street’s recent promotion of alternative investments should warrant serious concern among investors. It serves as an unpleasant example of history repeating itself. In the mid-1980s, Wall Street firms became enamored with limited partnerships (a form of alternative investment) that invested in so-called hard assets, paid the firms high commissions and fees, were illiquid and […]

Hedge Funds Under Regulatory Scrutiny

 

The SEC has hired hedge fund industry professionals to assist in its investigation of problems and abuses in the hedge fund industry. Three SEC enforcement units are involved in the investigations: the Asset Management unit headed by Bruce Karpati, the Market Abuse unit, and the Structured and New Products unit. The SEC has brought over […]

Hedge Funds – Too Much Hype, Too Little Performance

 

The financial press is increasingly critical of an investment product it glamorized in the past ? hedge funds. As a group they have underperformed unmanaged stock and balanced fund indices for the last 10 years while enriching fund managers. Yet more hedge funds continue to come on line. The question is why do they continue […]

Invested in Hedge Funds? You’d Better Think Again!

 

Hedge funds have long been a quagmire for investors according to informed observers. Nevertheless, they somehow attract money with the lure of spectacular returns despite actual poor performance. Hedge funds traverse high-risk and often exotic territories and cannot be readily liquidated. More often than not, they are doomed from the outset by very high management […]

Is Time Running Out on Criminal Prosecutions Against Wall Street ?

 

Federal prosecutors may be about to run out of time to file criminal charges against Wall Street participants for their role in the financial crisis. Charges for most federal offenses, including securities fraud, must be filed within five years of the offense, experts say. The subprime lending that played a significant role in the crisis […]

USA Today: Citigroup Forced To Pay $85 Million to MAT/ASTA Investors — And Counting

 

USA Today published an article yesterday reporting that Citigroup has been forced to pay at least $85 million to investors in its disastrous MAT/ASTA municipal arbitrage hedge funds. “Investor hedge fund claims costs Citigroup $85M and counting,” by Kevin McCoy, USA Today). That amount does not include payments made by Citigroup to at least 39 […]

Citigroup and MAT/ASTA Manager Still Deny Everything Despite Being Caught Red-Handed

 

The manager of Citigroup’s disastrous MAT/ASTA municipal arbitrage hedge funds, who left Citigroup in 2008 and now works in Bangladesh, recently told BusinessWeek that he has no regrets, no responsibility for what happened to investors, and would not have done anything differently. (“Ex-Manager Islam Has No Regrets After Funds Crash,” Donal Griffin and Anthony Effinger, […]

The Number of Very Large Securities Arbitration Cases is on the Rise

 

The amount of dollars at stake in FINRA securities arbitrations has grown in recent years. Of the 7,000 claims currently pending, approximately 200 involve claims of $10 million or more. “The claims coming in now are substantially larger than what we had a few years ago,” Linda Fienberg, president of FINRA Dispute Resolution, was quoted […]

MAT/ASTA Cases Reveal the Seamy Side of Wall Street

 

Ordinarily, the evidence presented in a FINRA arbitration is kept “confidential” and secret from the public. That’s the way the securities industry likes it, because it really does not want the public to see the evidence against it. But in its zeal to try to overturn the largest amount ever awarded to individual investors in […]