Unstructured Finance

By Matthew Goldstein

Leave it to Phil Falcone to find a glimmer of good news to relay to the beleaguered investors in his Harbinger Capital Partners. A day after U.S. securities regulators threatened to sanction the billionaire hedge fund manger for alleged trading irregularities, Falcone told investors in his roughly $4 billion firm that not all is lost.

In a note emailed to investors the day after Falcone officially learned the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is considering charging him with a number of securities law violations, the former Harvard hockey star told them that nothing the SEC is looking at involves his beloved LightSquared.

Additionally, it is important to note that neither Harbinger Group Inc. (“HRG”) nor LightSquared were the recipient of a Wells Notice, nor was either involved in any of the events being investigated.  Moreover, the Wells Notices received by HCP and certain affiliates are not related to any of the HCP funds’ investments in HRG, LightSquared or their predecessors.

Harbinger Group is the publicly traded company Falcone acquired over a year ago, which has served as an dumping ground for some of the hedge fund assets. But Harbinger Group is inconsequential compared to LightSquared, the upstart wireless telecom that Falcone has just about bet all of his investors money on. Falcone’s hedge fund has sunk more than $3 billion in equity into LightSquared and to this day it remains just about the only equity investor in the company.

As we said in a Aug. 2010 special report, the success or failure of Falcone’s hedge fund now rides solely on whether or not LightSquared can get its planned 4G high-speed network off the ground.

By Matthew Goldstein

It looks like the problems that Phil Falcone’s upstart wireless network may cause with some airline navigation systems may be impacting the price of the more than $1 billion in high-yield debt LightSquared has sold to hedge funds and mutual funds.

Over the past two weeks, the prevailing market price of LightSquared”s four-year term “junk” loans has slumped to about 95 cents on the dollar. That’s still a solid price for the high-yield offering that carries a 12 percent coupon. But it’s down considerably from late May, when the loans were fetching as much as 102 cents on the dollar.

LightSquared’s loans soared in the spring amid optimism that the prospects were looking good for the planned high-speed wireless network backed by Falcone and his Harbinger Capital Partners hedge fund. The optimism was fed by talk of a LightSquared initial public offering later this year, an infrastructure sharing agreement with telecom giant Sprint and a perceived increase in the value of its spectrum holdings.