WIFE OF STOCK PROMOTER RESIGNS FROM FIRM TIED TO LANCER GROUP
By CHRISTOPHER BYRON
March 28, 2003 --
The wife of a California stock promoter now awaiting trial on federal kickback charges has resigned from a New York-based company that figures in the Lancer Group hedge fund affair, The Post has learned.
The woman, Kathryn Braithwaite, stepped down last November as a director of a onetime garment industry company known as Stage II Apparel, which trades on the American Stock Exchange under the name Magic Lantern Group. A source at the Amex, who declined to be identified, said the Braithwaite resignation came after exchange officials questioned her role at Magic Lantern.
The source said the Amex's concerns developed after officials learned that Braithwaite's husband, Bruce D. Cowen, is accused of attempting to sell $5 million worth of unregistered penny stock illegally to an undercover FBI agent. Cowen's trial is scheduled to begin in Miami in June.
The Lancer hedge fund group, which currently owns roughly 48 percent of Magic Lantern's shares, claimed last autumn to have more than $1 billion under management. But the Park Avenue-based fund family, which is suing The Post for its coverage of its problems, is beset with redemption difficulties that began last summer.
That's when an audit of the company's flagship Lancer Offshore fund caused investors to begin questioning the value of the fund's holdings. Morgan Stanley, an investor in one of the Lancer funds, is suing Lancer for refusing to turn over an audited financial statement of the fund's accounts.
SEC filings show that controlling blocks of many companies in the Lancer portfolio are troubled penny stocks held by the same group of three or four individuals. Cowen owns a small block of Magic Lantern's stock through a California-based business consulting firm called Capital Research Ltd.
Phone calls to the Cowen-Braithwaite residence in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., were not returned. |
