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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Buckey who wrote (105784)	1/16/2009 9:38:07 AM
From: scion	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 122087

UBS to face pay-out calls over Madoff ties By Brooke Masters in London and Peggy Hollinger in Paris Published: January 15 2009 11:31 \| Last updated: January 15 2009 23:39 ft.com UBS could face new pay-out claims after a Luxembourg judge on Thursday ordered the Swiss bank to repay €30m ($39m) to a French financial group that had invested in funds linked with Bernard Madoff, the US financier charged with running a $50bn fraud scheme. In what Luxembourg lawyers said was an unusually tough ruling, the court also ordered UBS to repay Oddo Asset Management by Friday or face an extra €3m for every day’s delay. Oddo won its case on the grounds that its investment in the Luxalpha fund set up by UBS had been sold on November 17 – roughly a month before authorities arrested Mr Madoff. But the Swiss bank, custodian for the fund, did not release the proceeds to Oddo. According to two people with access to court documents, roughly 15 other investors could potentially fall into the same category. UBS confirmed the decision in a written statement, adding “The Luxalpha fund will carry out the ruling.” It declined to comment further. Oddo said it launched the legal action after the arrest of Mr Madoff on December 12, after asking UBS repeatedly why the funds had not yet been paid. The bank continued to refuse to pay after January 6, when Luxalpha gave the Luxembourg arm of UBS written permission to repay all investors who had requested redemptions by November 17, according to the ruling. The judge wrote that UBS’s refusal to pay was “manifestly unjustified” and dismissed the argument that the funds were affected by a US court order to freeze all assets relating to Madoff vehicles. Oddo said Thursday its decision to sell had come from a review of its investment portfolios launched in mid-2008 following the arrival of Thierry Deheuvels as head of investment. The ruling does not affect the vast majority of investors in Madoff-related funds, because they did not put in sell orders before the arrest. One blue-chip French fund manager told the Financial Times that it was working with investors accounting for some $350m in Luxalpha investments to tackle UBS over its role as a custodian bank. The French fund manager sought to recover its investment after Mr Madoff’s fraud was revealed. “We don’t have the same rights as Oddo,” said one senior executive. Luxalpha shareholders could call an extraordinary meeting of the fund to force out the board, which was almost entirely made up of UBS executives, he said. Meanwhile, a 66-year-old Parisian pensioner on Thursday filed the first criminal lawsuit in France over €540,000 invested in Luxalpha, alleging breach of trust and fraud against an unnamed party. The allegations focus on the duties of the custodian bank, UBS. UBS is already facing lawsuits in New York and Luxembourg. HBSC, the other main European custodian for Madoff “feeder” funds has been sued in New York and, as of Wednesday, Ireland. ft.com

To: Buckey who wrote (105784)	1/16/2009 12:45:23 PM
From: scion	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

Did Madoff Trade Any Stocks? Evidence Is Lacking January 15, 2009, 2:44 pm dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com The disgraced financier Bernard L. Madoff, accused of securities fraud, appears to have been running a pure Ponzi scheme because industry regulators have been unable to find evidence of any actual stock trades. A Wall Street self-regulatory group said there was no record of Mr. Madoff’s investment funds placing trades through his brokerage operation. That appears to leave only two options — either he was placing trades only through other firms, which would be highly unusual, or he was not placing any trades. “There was no evidence of the Madoff broker-dealer executing trades for the [Madoff] investment adviser,” Herb Perone, spokesman for the regulatory group, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, told The Boston Globe. The authority, known as Finra, and its predecessor, the National Association of Securities Dealers, has been examining the records of Mr. Madoff’s broker-dealer operation, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, every two years since the firm started in 1960. The last exam was in 2007, Mr. Perone said. The finding is one of many facts investigators are poring over as they seek to piece together Mr. Madoff’s reputed $50 billion Ponzi scheme, an unidentified lawyer involved in the case told The Globe. The newspaper said evidence that Mr. Madoff did not process any of his investment funds’ trades through his own brokerage firm would be a key indicator that he was not making the trades he claimed. If Mr. Madoff was making no real trades, the complicated statements he sent out to customers were apparently fiction — and in fact may have been part of his cover-up. Separately, Sonja Kohn, chairwoman of Bank Medici, the Austrian private bank that invested $3.2 billion with Mr. Madoff, asserted that he was not a personal friend and did not confide in her. “Having fallen victim to a company supervised by a U.S. regulator, as did many of the world’s most illustrious financial institutions, does not ease the pain,” Ms. Kohn said in an e-mailed statement received by Bloomberg News. “Reading that some voices believe that I should have known better makes the pain even more unbearable,” she said in her first public comment since Mr. Madoff was arrested last month. Ms. Kohn said Mr. Madoff was “trusted by the best and smartest” and likened his reputed Ponzi scheme to a tsunami or earthquake that strikes “unpredictably and devastatingly.” Go to Article from The Boston Globe » boston.com Go to Article from Bloomberg News » bloomberg.com dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com 5 comments so far... 1. January 15th, 2009 4:01 pm It’s interesting that her analogy here is so apt. These two different types of natural disasters are entirely avoidable with proper due diligence: 1) don’t live on the coast, and 2) don’t live on fault lines. — Posted by John William 2. January 15th, 2009 4:59 pm If that’s true, then what were all of the analysts, traders, back office people doing all day? How could no one else realize the whole thing wasn’t real? — Posted by Michael 3. January 15th, 2009 6:55 pm This would have to be the biggest embarrassment of all for the SEC. Bad books or not, to not own a single security because you never bought a single share would have to come up in even the shortest of detailed review of the books. With money going in without the anything tangible to show for it is the perfect example of a Ponzi scheme. — Posted by Dave 4. January 15th, 2009 7:39 pm s.e.c. = sleepy eyes closed — Posted by chris hauser 5. January 15th, 2009 7:40 pm or as casey stengel said “can’t anybody play this here game?” or something like that — Posted by chris hauser