Soros’ son strikes out on his own
NEW YORK, March 30 (Reuters) – The tumult within billionaire
investor George Soros’ firm continues as one of his sons is
separating some of his personal fortune to manage it himself.
Jonathan Soros, who stepped down in September from
day-to-day management of Soros Fund Management LLC, plans to
hire at least one of his father’s key employees, say two people
familiar with the situation.
PIMCO’S Gross sees lower returns in “repressive” environment
NEW YORK (Reuters) – PIMCO co-founder Bill Gross, the manager of the world’s biggest bond fund, is lowering expectations.
In his April investment letter posted on the firm’s website on Tuesday, Gross says: “Total return as a supercharged bond strategy is fading.”
Insight: The Wall Street gold rush in foreclosed homes
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Dan Magder recently gave up a top job with private equity firm Lone Star Funds to strike out on his own and become a landlord.
He’s joining a growing list of big and small investors who see fat profits to be made in renting out foreclosed homes, especially now the U.S. government is moving ahead with a trial project to sell big pools of single-family homes that Fannie Mae currently owns in some of the hardest-hit housing markets.
The Wall Street gold rush in foreclosed homes
NEW YORK, March 20 (Reuters) – Dan Magder recently gave up a
top job with private equity firm Lone Star Funds to strike out
on his own and become a landlord.
He’s joining a growing list of big and small investors who
see fat profits to be made in renting out foreclosed homes,
especially now the U.S. government is moving ahead with a trial
project to sell big pools of single-family homes that Fannie Mae
currently owns in some of the hardest-hit housing markets.
Suite Scams revisited
Virtual offices can be a great cost-saver for a solo attorney, a lone accountant or any other professional who can’t afford the expense of maintaining a separate support staff to run a business. But these outfits, in which a solo professional gets to essentially rent the services of a receptionist, a secretary and conference space, also can provide cover for bad guys bent on doing mischief.
A case in point is Robert Sucarato, a New Jersey man, who was sentenced Friday to 11 years in a federal prison for using a virtual office as a front for an alleged multi-billion hedge fund that bilked investors out of $1.6 million. A few years ago, when I was at BusinessWeek, I wrote about Sucarato long before federal prosecutors were on his trail. The BW story was called “Suite Scams” and it focused on much more than Sucarato and showed how virtual offices were proving to be a useful tool for Wall Street fraudsters with a slick website and a good marketing pitch.
Art world does makeover of American dream
By Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Goldstein
(Reuters) – There is no easy fix to the foreclosure crisis in the U.S., but the art world is offering one possible remedy.
A new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York looks at five U.S. towns hit hard by foreclosures and asked a group of the nation’s best architects, urban planners, ecologists, engineers and landscape designers to come up with ideas for reimagining the way towns might look in the future and the way people might live in them.
UF’s Weekend Reads
We’re introducing a new feature on UF: a link to some weekend reads. Here is the first edition complied by Sam Forgione.
From The Guardian:
Andrew Balls, head of European investment for PIMCO from its London office, shares similar views on Europe and regulation with his brother, Ed Balls, of the British Labour Party. Brotherly love even extended to one of PIMCO’s major investment decisions: when Bill Gross decided to sell UK government debt in 2010, and Andrew Balls allegedly disagreed with the move, apparently backing his brother’s political status.
Bond investors lobby Hill on mortgage settlement
NEW YORK, March 1 (Reuters) – An association of
mortgage bond investors is working Capitol Hill in an effort to
have its interests considered in the final details of a $25
billion mortgage settlement and in any future deals that aim to
fix the nation’s ailing housing market.
Earlier this week, representatives of the Association of
Mortgage Investors met with a number federal lawmakers to press
the point that investors in mortgage-backed securities should
not be penalized in the settlement state and federal authorities
reached last month with five big banks.
Gordon Gekko’s Perfect Hedge
By Matthew Goldstein and Jennifer Ablan
It’s not every day a public service announcement, much less one for the FBI, makes national headlines. Then again, it’s not every day that Michael Douglas reprises his Gordon Gekko role to make a pitch for informants to come forward and help law enforcement smoke out insider traders.
The ad, which has been featured on network newscasts and was heavily touted on the front-page of The Wall Street Journal, highlights the task at hand for the likes of David Chaves, a senior agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Prosecutor, Goldman overreached: programmer’s lawyer
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Kevin Marino may be the lawyer of the moment, after persuading a U.S. appellate court panel last week to overturn the criminal conviction of a former Goldman Sachs Group computer programmer.
The U.S. Court of Appeals moved with rare and unprecedented speed in reversing Sergey Aleynikov’s conviction on a charge of stealing trade secrets, just hours after Marino appeared before the three-judge panel to argue on his client’s behalf.
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