White Said To Favor Quick Action On Hedge Fund Advertising (Finalternatives)
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s new chairman seems more eager to pass new rules allowing hedge funds to advertise than either of her predecessors. While the regulator has received more than 200 comment letters about the proposal to end the 80-year-old ban on hedge fund marketing, Mary Jo White does not seem inclined to make major changes to the draft regulation formally introduced in August. Instead, White reportedly hopes to add investor protections to the rule later, Bloomberg News reports. The rule was mandated by last year’s JOBS Act, and the SEC was given until this past July to produce a final rule. But it has failed to do so, and the maneuvers around the rule have provoked controversy and much grumbling from both sides.
Paulson, Hedge Funds Could Be Burned By Ally Mortgage Deal (Finalternatives)
Ally Financial appears ready to move forward with the reorganization of its mortgage business—without the support of its hedge-fund creditors. Residential Capital is reportedly close to a deal with some of its creditors that could cut out Paulson & Co., the New York Post reported. The lender last week offered to increase its payment to those creditors at mediation. A deal could allow ResCap to file a reorganization plan in federal bankruptcy court by a May 7 deadline, and could allow Ally to distance itself from ResCap’s troubles. According to the Post, Ally does not believe it needs the approval of Paulson’s creditor group to win the court’s approval. Instead, it has been focused on creditors that include monoline insurers and mortgage-backed securities. Paulson and Appaloosa Management in January urged Ally to back ResCap to ensure a full repayment of RecCap’s debts, threatening litigation if it chose not to do so.
How to Stop Lying (HuffingtonPost)
I lied to him to get a job. The hedge fund manager asked me how much money I had in the bank. I had ZERO but I said, “a million dollars”. This was in 2002. In the prior two years I had lost all the money I ever made and my home. Now I was broke. He said, “how can you afford to live on that?” Which strikes me as ludicrous now but I felt every blood cell in me turn upside down in shame then. I felt he would think it was courageous if I threw the question back at him. “Well, how much money do you have?” He said, “one hundred million dollars.” Who knows? One friend of mine told me something, “you can never tell how much money someone has until they file for bankruptcy.”
CBS Introduces Veeven A. Cohen To The World (DealBreaker)
Hedge fund honcho Steve Cohen made the jump from Wall Street to Main Street this week when a character loosely based on him appeared on a CBS crime drama. In a story ripped from the headlines, Thursday night’s “Person of Interest” centered on a hedge fund’s insider-trading scandal gone awry. The show’s hedge fund was called VAC Capital. Cohen’s firm is SAC Capital. “I almost fell off the couch laughing,” one viewer told The Post about the show’s thinly veiled reference to Cohen’s $16 billion fund. There were more similarities. The show centered on a doctor who told a young trader at VAC that a drug trial he was overseeing was “about to fail.” The trader earned VAC $500 million on the insider tip, which he called “black edge.” SAC’s traders have also reportedly called such tips “black edge.”
Carl Icahn stops Atlantic City Trump Plaza Hotel sale (GamingToday)
The man responsible for stopping the sale of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City to a California group is billionaire investor Carl Icahn. It is Icahn who is the senior lender to the property and as such has to agree to the sale price. The $20 million offered by the Meruelo Group is too low, he said. Just what would be a fair price? Icahn hasn’t said. He holds the mortgage for both Trump Plaza and Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, both in Atlantic City. The mortgage was said to total $289 million.
Another Executive Leaves JPMorgan, Raising Questions as Vote Nears (NYTimes)
In the depths of the financial crisis, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), and his top lieutenants were hailed as “The Survivors” on a Fortune magazine cover. Today, of the 15 executives featured in that article, only three remain — and one of them has been demoted. The most recent high-level exit at the bank — that of the co-chief operating officer, Frank J. Bisignano, regarded within JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) as something of an operational wizard — has heightened worries about the persistent executive turnover at the bank and raised fresh questions about who is ready to succeed Mr. Dimon one day.
