Today is a great day. For Jerry Putnam to finally put some of his wacky lies on this thread is fantastic. It was a beautiful day in Chicago yesterday, yet at 5:29 PM Putnam is posting on the SI thread? Nothing better to do for a man who just scammed fifty(50) million dollars (50 million figure from 1/8/98 Wall Street Journal, page C20) out of Goldman Sachs and E*Trade. I hope Putnam does not come back with some lame excuse and say that he lent someone his password and Mack put up his crazy post.
I liked his excuse on the Terra Nova thread the other day, when he said that Virago LLC was a mistake in the press release, that it should have been Terra Nova Trading.
Message 7166075
The most important press release in your life, and it has a major mistake? Do what I did, spend $25 and forward a letter to the IL Secretary of State and you will see that the Archipelago ECN was owned by Jerry Putnam and MarrGwen Townsend.
Now that Putnam thinks he has 50 million dollars in his pocket, do you really think he is going to give a damm about supporting MB Trading and its problems? That is another reason why I am very confident that Terra Nova branch offices will be going on their own sooner than later.
Since November I have laid out a lot of background about Terra Nova Trading and Townsend. In the near future, there will be available a independent analysis of this whole ARCA/TNTgate. I say we look forward to the near future. As far as using ARCA, if you get burned by it like other posters have, then you can draw your own conclusions about ever using it in the future.
I had a question as to where the goofy name "Blue Water Partners" came from. Blue Water Partners was a shell company that Putnam had set up to play some stock games with his pal Wolfgang Flottl. When those games did not take place, he had an empty company. He and Townsend wanted the patent application that was filed in my name, to be assigned to Blue Water Partners. Contact the patent office and you can see that I did assign the patent to Blue Water Partners. Also I had a working SCANSHIFT demo that I took to Townsend. I did not just take them drawings. I also met with Townsend a number of times before Putnam ever did.
50 million dollars can buy a lot of people's integrity. I am hopeful that respected individuals in the Chicago trading community cannot be bought by Putnam and am confident that the written track record is strong. Chicago police officers are a different question, except that this time I have two good legs and will be able to put a fight.
It was asked, who is Wolfgang Flottl? Remember, Putnam was fired from Prudential for doing Flottl's business with no money in the account. Then when he went to Gelderman, they changed their mind about doing Flottl's business. Thus, when we were talking one day, I said why don't we start our own broker dealer and we can spread pieces of this man's trades all over town. I personally took Putnam and introduced him to numerous heads of clearing firms while he was still at Gelderman. How did I meet a lot of those clearing firms. I had been a member of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, Chicago Board of Trade, and at the time was at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Unfortunately, Flottl never did any trades. With the legal bills piling up, Putnam decided to play hard ball with me, a one legged man. His $100,000 a month lifestyle could not get by on $20,000 month. Thus he did not want to give me any revenue that was coming in from our clients that had SCANSHIFT. I never made a dime at Terra Nova, and he even went so far as to destroy my personal papers that were at our office.
It is important to point out that If Putnam had NOT!!! continued the three way relationship we had with Townsend, then things would be different. If he had gone to any other software firm in the world to program his ECN, than I would not have a claim. The problem is, that we had an agreement where the three of us, Putnam, Townsend and myself would participate in future projects. One of those projects I laid out was Chicago Trading and Arbitrage modeled after Bright Trading.
To this day I am continually amazed at Townsend's and Putnam's raw greed to outright steal from a man who was battling from a hip and pelvis shattered in 12 places. For those of you have access to a library, look up Townsend's Real Tick advertisments in Futures magazine in 1995. You will see SCANSHIFT, but no where will you see patent pending Blue Water Partners or my name. In the same advertisements, you will see Market Profile, with a copyright notation. In written text interview, these scumbags tried to make it sound that SCANSHIFT was all there's. Notice in Putnam's garbage he leaves out Borsellino. Not once has he ever mentioned him and how he ripped Borsellino off. Borsellino's court case is a matter of public record, go pull it.
I will paste below a couple articles from Business Week, and then you can get a feel for why I am probably a marked man, given what I know about Putnam, Townsend, Terra Nova and Flottl!
PLEASE KEEP FORWARDING YOUR PRIVATE MESSAGES. They have taught me a great deal over the last month and a half.
copyright Business Week
WOLFGANG FLOTTL'S NETWORK OF SHADOWS;
Author: Leah Nathans Spiro in New York, with Eric Frey in Vienna;
To his New York society friends, Wolfgang Fluttl is just another
well-heeled up-and-comer. Born in Austria, he is married to Barbara
Anne Eisenhower, the granddaughter of President Dwight D. ...; Size:
12K;
Finance; 05-09-1994;
The financier's rumored losses are sending ripples from Vienna to the
Caribbean to Wall Street
WOLFGANG FLOTTL'S NETWORK OF
SHADOWS
To his New York society friends, Wolfgang Flottl is just another well- heeled
up-and-comer. Born in Austria, he is married to Barbara Anne Eisenhower, the
granddaughter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and attended Richard M.
Nixon's funeral. He has an eight-acre spread called Castle Point in Tucker's Town,
in an exclusive Bermuda billionaire' s enclave where his neighbors are Ross Perot
and Italian media mogul and Prime Minister-elect Silvio Berlusconi.
A former Kidder, Peabody & Co. vice-president, Flottl, 38, drives a $229,000
Lamborghini Diabolo and motors a $700,000 speedboat named Barbara Anne of
Hamilton, according to The Bermuda Sun. He is developing the tallest building in
downtown Hamilton, Bermuda, in partnership with Sir John W. Swan, the British
colony's Premier. Employing public- relations advisers to speed his social
aspirations, Flottl has contributed to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and
American Ballet Theatre.
FUTURES SHOCK. Some Wall Street firms see Wolfgang Flottl in a very
different light. To them, he is a potential liability. An aggressive and extremely
secretive investor, Flottl apparently has been making huge market bets. Although
hard information about Flottl is scarce, rumors abound on the Street that his
sprawling Bermuda-based trading empire has suffered some serious losses in the
first quarter of this year because of the sharp increase in interest rates, an event that
battered many other professional traders. Those losses came on the heels, say
Street sources, of large profits of $575 million in 1992 and $750 million to $1
billion in 1993.
The most recent rumors link Flottl to large sales in mid-April of Japanese futures,
German and French bonds, and other sovereign debt. ''There is a large liquidation
going on and the Street thinks it's him [Flottl],'' says a hedge fund trader.
Some Street firms with which he has traded now are reexamining their exposure to
Flottl and whether to continue trading with him. But Flottl still has friends on Wall
Street, including Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, and Nomura Securities
International. ''We've done business with him for six and a half years, and its been
a joy and a pleasure. We would like to have other clients like him,'' says Bear,
Stearns & Co. Chief Executive Alan C. Greenberg. Morgan and Nomura declined
comment.
Representatives of Flottl won't comment on his profits or losses but say thaRoss
Capital Markets Ltd., his chief investment vehicle, is ''highly liquid'' and ''very
well capitalized.'' And they insist that none of the Street firms where he does
significant business has pulled credit lines from Flottl.
Possible losses aren't Flottl's only problem. Recent articles in the Austrian press
have uncovered a close financial relationship between Flottl and his father, Walter
Flottl, chairman of the Vienna-based Bank for Labor & Business, known as
BAWAG. Owned by Austria's labor unions, BAWAG had been considered
Austria's most conservative bank. Yet Walter Flottl, through BAWAG, has
invested hundreds of millions of dollars in offshore companies affiliated with his son,
a relationship Walter Flottl has not denied. The money, Austrian publications say,
was put in often risky, speculative investments, which Flottl senior denies. Austrian
authorities are investigat- ing whether the bank took undue risks.
The most recent stories in the Austrian press claim Wolfgang Flottl now owes
BAWAG $1.7 billion, with some $400 million in loans extended this year alone to
cover margin calls on leveraged investments when the bond market turned down.
The publications say Flottl's apparent securities liquidations stem from BAWAG's
effort to retrieve the banks' funds from Flottl's Caribbean entities.
Flottl's representatives deny these reports. In a recent letter to BAWAG, Flottl said
that because of ''scurrilous attacks'' in the press, he was ending dealings with
BAWAG. Flottl's representatives insist that by the first week in May, Flottl will
have terminated all outstanding BAWAG transactions and the bank will have
retrieved all the cash advanced to Flottl's entities. ''The bank won't have any
investments--structured or advised--by Ross or Wolfgang,'' say Flottl's
representatives.
''GOOD FORTUNE.'' By all accounts, financial help from his father and BAWAG
was crucial to Flottl's investment success. Flottl obtained degrees from Vienna
University, the London School of Economics, and Harvard business school, and
spent six years with Kidder in international corporate finance. But when he left
Kidder in 1987 to trade independently, he had very little capital of his own.
Representatives of Flottl acknowledge some initial assistance from BAWAG, but
depict him as a highly skilled investor with an almost uncanny ability to play market
cycles. In the late 1980s, they say, he scored repeatedly in risk-arbitrage bets on
takeover deals. When the deal business cooled, Flottl moved into
less-developed-country debt, picking up choice credits on the cheap and selling out
with big gains. More recently, they say, he has been rolling up big profits with U.S.
government bonds and foreign sovereign debt. ''I've always looked at the
relationship as an accommodation to the bank, where the bank had the great good
fortune to hook up with a sophisticated investor,'' says Theodore Altman, an
attorney for Flottl. ''Wolfgang helped them get into the capital markets and had
enormous success.' '
Austrian regulators may not see it that way. Traditionally, BAWAG remained
consistently profitable by spurning such fads as foreign lending and sticking to
mortgage loans to individuals. But in mid- April, the Austrian magazine News
published a document purporting to show that BAWAG had loaned at least $330
million toRoss Capital, a Bermuda-based trading company owned by Flottl.
Subsequent reports in another Austrian magazine, Wirtschaftswoche, said that by
the end of last year, BAWAG had funnelled as much as $1.7 billion to Flottl
through some two dozen companies affiliated with Flottl on various Caribbean
islands. That amount exceeded the bank's core capital, News said. The investments
carried interest of LIBOR (London interbank offered rate) plus 5%--high even for
risky deals. Walter Flottl has claimed that these investments were riskless because
they were fully secured.
Flottl's representatives say BAWAG most recently invested in some 25 offshore
companies affiliated with Flottl, which held securities similar to collateralized bond
obligations. Structured specifically for BAWAG to carry a very low risk, they were
secured by U.S. government and other sovereign debt. Flottl's representatives will
not comment on the size of BAWAG's investment, but they claim BAWAG
received only LIBOR plus 2% on most of their investments.
The bank's relationship with Flottl was apparently very remunerative. It accounted
for about a quarter of BAWAG's annual earnings over the past six years, making
BAWAG Austria's most profitable bank, with a 1993 operating profit of $168
million.
At times, according to Wirtschaftswoche, BAWAG has shielded profits for
political reasons. For instance, BAWAG, through Flottl's offshore subsidiaries,
invested massively in the RJR Nabisco takeover battle in 1989, making a profit of
$250 million to $300 million. But BAWAG did not want to declare this profit,
which would have incurred a 40% tax rate and produced a sudden jump in
earnings that would have pressured the bank to declare a special dividend. Just as
important, the bank feared it might have seemed inappropriate for a trade union
bank to profit from a takeover battle. Thus, Flottl kept the money parked in
overseas subsidiaries, funneling it back to the bank in the form of high-interest
loans. Flottl's representatives do not dispute this explanation.
Flottl's dealings with BAWAG have enabled him to create a secretive empire of
almost overwhelming complexity. His main company in Bermuda is Belforte Group
Holdings Ltd., according to his representatives, which owns Ross Capital
Markets, his main trading vehicle. Other affiliates include Pembroke Co., EBT
Securities Ltd., and European Bank & Trust.
Flottl's main U.S. arm is Normandy Asset Management, which has offices in
midtown and downtown Manhattan and Greenwich, Conn. Normandy runs some
of Flottl's money but the company is not owned by Flottl, says a Flottl
representative. It is primarily owned by Edward Dalidowicz, a trader and a close
associate of Flottl, say the representatives. Some of Flottl's money had been
managed by Max C. Chapman Jr., CEO of Nomura Securities International Inc.
(BW, Dec. 20, 1993), but the Flottl representative claims that Flottl no longer
trades with Moran Group, Chapman's investment company.
Stories of Flottl's penchant for secrecy abound. The Bermuda offices of Ross
Capital can only be cleaned when the computer screens are off, says a
knowledgeable Bermuda source. Employees must sign lengthy contracts that
contain strict rules against divulging information, say Street sources. Flottl recently
hired the former head of the Secret Service in New York to provide security for his
companies. Despite the fact that many Wall Street firms trade extensively with him,
financial officers of two such firms told BUSINESS WEEK that Flottl never
provided them with satisfactory financial information. In one case, a government
bond dealer stopped trading with Flottl when he refused to provide a peek at his
balance sheet.
''BEYOND WEIRD.'' Not surprisingly, much of the speculation about Flottl
centers on where he gets his money. In early 1992, Salomon Brothers hired Kroll
Associates, the investigations firm, to look into rumors that he was tapping
shadowy Middle East figures and that drug money and money laundering were
involved. Kroll determined the rumors were baseless. But Arthur Liman, Flottl's
attorney, asked Kroll in 1992 to investigate the source of the rumors. Kroll
identified an Austrian and an Israeli who had attempted to blackmail Flottl, claiming
that they could help him stop the rumors. Kroll says the Israeli had played this scam
before and that both are now under Federal investigation.
Kroll Chairman Jules Kroll says he reassured Flottl's trading partners the rumors
were part of an extortion plot. ''It was beyond weird,' ' Kroll says. ''Our
conclusion was that these dirtballs had tried to shake him [Flottl] down. He refused.
The source of funds was an arrangement with his father's bank: Nothing more or
less mysterious than that.''
A special task force of representatives of the Austrian Central bank and finance
ministry is now probing BAWAG's offshore activities. ''It is not forbidden by law
to have business dealings with family members. This is an ethical question that
concerns only the supervisory board and the owners,'' says Anton Stanzel, head of
the Austrian Finance Ministry's banking supervisory agency. One issue is whether
the bank exceeded legal risk limits on dealings with one client.
Another matter is whether the BAWAG's supervisory board or Austrian regulators
knew about the bank's dealings with Flottl. Wolfgang Flottl' s representatives insist
that the bank was fully informed. They point to a letter Wolfgang sent BAWAG in
April that said: ''The management and supervisory boards of the bank which
reviewed and approved all of these investments can share our pride in these
outstanding results.' ' But Stanzel says he was unaware of the relationship. Banking
sources in Vienna say the supervisory board wasn't informed either. Walter Flottl
could not be reached for comment and a bank spokesman was unable to say
whether the board was fully informed.
As is the case with even routine facets of Wolfgang Flottl's empire, the truth of this
matter is likely to remain very elusive for some time.
Copyright 1994 McGraw-Hill, Inc. All rights reserved.
Leah Nathans Spiro in New York, with Eric Frey in Vienna, WOLFGANG
FLOTTL'S NETWORK OF SHADOWS., 05-09-1994.
Copyright 1991-1997, by the McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
Terms of Use
CLINTON'S VACATION HOST WITH A PAST
_____________________________________________
Business Week: August 12, 1996
Department: News: Analysis & Commentary: PEOPLE
Headline: CLINTON'S VACATION HOST WITH A PAST
Deck: The President's vacation plans may raise eyebrows
Byline: By Leah Nathans Spiro in New York
Certainly, Jackson Hole, Wyo., is a stunning spot. Even so, President Clinton's
decision to vacation from Aug. 9 through Aug. 17 at Max C. Chapman Jr.'s
Bar-B-Bar ranch has left some Wall Streeters scratching their heads: Clinton will
be spending his time with an ardent Republican who has drawn the critical attention
of securities regulators.
From 1989 to May, 1996, Chapman was the chief executive of Nomura Securities
International, the U.S. unit of the giant Japanese broker. He is now nonexecutive
chairman. Nomura and Chapman were investigated from 1992 to 1995 by the
New York Stock Exchange for a possible failure- to-supervise charge. At issue
was whether Nomura permitted some $212 million of trades in violation of the
exchange's net capital rules. On Nov. 29, 1995, the firm, while neither admitting
nor denying guilt, paid a $1 million fine, the third-largest in NYSE history.
When Chapman was CEO of Nomura, he had an unusual arrangement whereby he
established and ran two unpublicized ventures for his own benefit, independent of
Nomura. Chapman's primary operation was the Moran Group, an investment firm
he formed in October, 1992. The main investor in Moran was Wolfgang Flottl, a
secretive Bahamas-based investor married to a granddaughter of President
Eisenhower. Moran raised eyebrows within Nomura because Chapman used to
execute trades for Moran while he was CEO of Nomura, which left him open to
conflict-of-interest charges. It wasn't until October, 1993, that Chapman's
Japanese bosses got him to agree to formal oversight of his personal trading.
Chapman declined comment, but a spokesman says all Moran trades were
disclosed to Nomura.
Nor was Chapman always a Clinton fan. As a conservative Republican, he has
been known to criticize the President and his liberal policies at Nomura's Monday
morning meetings for about 30 senior executives, say some of those who attended
the meetings.
MUTUAL FRIEND. Such talk stopped, however, after Chapman met Clinton last
summer, when the President was vacationing at the ranch of Senator John D.
Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), which is next door to Chapman's. Erskine Bowles,
formerly Clinton's deputy chief of staff and a mutual friend of Chapman and
Clinton, introduced the two. Chapman, an excellent golfer, played golf with the
President, and hosted the Clinton family for lunch at his ranch--a 1,200-acre
stretch bordered by the Snake River at the foot of the Grand Teton Mountains.
And since then, he has attended a state dinner and slept over at the White House.
As a guest of Chapman, Clinton will not pay rent, says White House spokeswoman
Mary Ellen Glynn. And there is ''not a need to report personal hospitality on one's
income tax,'' she says. Chapman will not be at the ranch when the Clintons are
there, says Glynn. But Chapman will be nearby, and he plans to play golf with the
President in the mornings.
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