Posted on 12/15/2008 6:25:20 AM PST by marshmallow
Bernie Madoff's Victims (So Far)
HSBC "has emerged as one the largest victims of Bernard Madoff’s alleged fraud with potential exposure of about $1bn to the investment manager’s collapsed venture...HSBC’s exposure stemmed from loans it provided to institutional clients, mainly hedge funds of funds, that wanted to invest with Mr Madoff. HSBC’s direct exposure is believed to be about $1bn in loans provided to clients who invested some $500m of their own funds in Mr Madoff’s venture. Under the typical terms of these deals, if the US authorities recover any funds from Mr Madoff, HSBC will be paid first, with its clients suffering the first tranche of losses." (FT:)
Man Group’s RMF division has about $350m invested in funds which outsourced their management to Madoff securities, although this is a tiny fraction of the division’s $25bn of assets. (FT)
Tremont Capital. Fund of funds. More than $1bn invested. (FT)
Pioneer Investments, an arm of Italy’s UniCredit, had “substantially all” of $835m invested with Madoff. (FT)
Maxam Capital Management LLC. Combined loss of $280 million. "I'm wiped out," said Sandra Manzke, Maxam's founder and chairman. The Darien, Conn., fund of hedge funds will have to close as a result of the losses, she said. (WSJ)
Fairfield Greenwich Group. Bloomberg: The biggest loser may be Walter Noel’s Fairfield Greenwich Group, whose $7.3 billion Fairfield Sentry Ltd. invested with Madoff’s eponymous firm, three people familiar with the matter said... Fairfield Sentry has a record of more than 15 years with an annual return of 4 to 6 percentage points above benchmark interest rates, according to a marketing document dated this month that was prepared by Zurich-based NPB New Private Bank Ltd. On an absolute basis, returns exceeded 10 percent every year from 1991 through 2000. Since then, they ranged from 6.4 percent to 9.8 percent...The strategy is a “split-strike conversion,” where the investment manager buys shares of large U.S. companies and enters into options contracts to limit the risk, the document says.
Fix Asset Management. Bloomberg: Fix Asset Management, which had an account worth at least $400 million with Madoff Investments. The firm said it’s checking with lawyers about the holdings. “We are very shocked,” John Fix, the son of founder Charles Fix, said by phone from Greece. “We put in redemptions in the past few months and got our money back no problem. We are just so surprised about all this.”
Kingate Management Ltd. Bloomberg says $2.8 billion Kingate Global Fund Ltd. invested with Madoff.
Santander. WSJ: The eurozone's largest bank by market value, said its clients had an exposure of €2.33 billion ($3.1 billion) to Madoff's investment funds, mainly through its Optimal Strategic US Equity fund. More than €2 billion belongs to institutional investors and international clients of its private-banking business, which provides services to wealthy individuals, it said. The remaining €320 million belongs to private-banking customers in Spain, where Santander is based.
Thyssen Family. Source sends the following: Thybo Investments grew out of a family office for Thyssen. They have been in fund of funds it seems since 1989. Thybo International is a "proper" fund of fund but it's newer share class G invests only in one manager - and i'm 99% sure it's Madoff as the returns are almost the same. Some more info. The fund started in Jan 2007. Ernst & Young. Luxembourg are the auditors. UBS Luxembourg is the administrator. Thybo states on their webpage: "Our track record incorporates audited financial statements at both a composite firm-wide and individual portfolios level."
Ira Roth's family. WSJ: Ira Roth, a New Jersey resident, who says his family has about $1 million invested through Mr. Madoff's firm, is "in a state of panic." He said his 86-year-old mother-in-law has been living on the investments' returns, and he has been using the funds to pay college tuition.
Sterling Equities. Fund controlled by Fred Wilpon, co-owner of the NY Mets, confirms it had money with Madoff.
Stephen Abbott, a San Francisco lawyer. WSJ: [Abbott] and two siblings had several hundred thousand dollars invested with Mr. Madoff. They inherited the trust from their father, who had befriended Mr. Madoff years ago. Performance remained steady through the current bear market, he said. "People were floored," he says. "We were making money in this lousy market." He says he is concerned about recovering the money but "you have to get philosophical about this stuff. It could be worse; we still have our health."
Palm Beach Country Club. Source: CNBC's David Faber
Lawrence Velvel, "69, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, said he and a friend may have lost millions of dollars between them (AP). "This is a major disaster for a lot of people," Velvel said in a telephone interview from his Andover, Mass., office. "You work all your life, you finally manage to save up something, and somebody who's entrusted with it, it turns out suddenly he's a crook. Lots of people are getting fully or partially wiped out." Velvel said he wants to know where government regulators, as well as accountants and others at Madoff's company, were when the money was being lost." (AP)
Loeb Family. Source: CNBC's David Faber
J. Ezra Merkin. GMAC LLC Chairman. WSJ: Mr. Merkin, the chairman of former General Motors Corp. financing arm GMAC, is also a money manager at Ascot Partners LLC in New York. Ascot, which had $1.8 billion under management as of Sept. 30, had substantially all of its assets invested with Mr. Madoff, according to a letter to Mr. Merkin sent to clients Thursday night. Mr. Merkin said as one of the largest investors in Ascot, he believed he had personally "suffered major losses from this catastrophe."
Norman Braman. Former Philadelphia Eagles owner
Leonard Feinstein, co-founder of retailer Bed Bath & Beyond. (WSJ)
Mort Zuckerman. Mr. Zuckerman, the chairman of real-estate firm Boston Properties and owner of the New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report, had significant exposure through a fund that invested substantially all of its assets with Mr. Madoff (WSJ)
Richard Spring. WSJ: A Boca Raton resident and former securities analyst, says he had about $11 million -- or 95% of his net worth -- invested with Mr. Madoff. "That's how much I believed in him," Mr. Spring said.
Elie Wiesel's Foundation For Humanity. Total assets of about $10 million.
Members of half-a-dozen country clubs: WSJ: "Mr. Madoff tapped social networks in Dallas, Chicago, Boston and Minneapolis. In Minnesota, he attracted investors from Hillcrest Golf Club of St. Paul and Oak Ridge Country Club in Hopkins, investors say. One of them estimated that investors from the two clubs may have invested more than $100 million combined. One of the largest clusters of Madoff investors was in Florida, where losses could be substantial. Mr. Madoff relied on a network of friends, family and business colleagues to attract investors. According to investors and agents, some of these agents were paid commissions for harvesting investors. Others had separate, lucrative business relationships with Mr. Madoff. "If you were eating lunch at the club or golfing, everyone was always talking about how Madoff was making them all this money," one investor says. "Everyone wanted to sign up." Jeff Fischer, a top divorce attorney in Palm Beach, says many of his clients were also Mr. Madoff's clients. "Every big divorce that came through my office had portfolio positions with Madoff," he says. Two of his investors said that among his clients, Mr. Madoff was considered a money-management legend; they would joke that if Mr. Madoff was a fraud, he'd take down half the world with him."
Bramdean Alternatives in the U.K. 9% of portfolio.
Banque Benedict Hentsch, Geneva-based private bank, $47.5 million.
Nomura and Neue Privat Bank. "Marketed access to Fairfield Sentry Ltd., a fund overseen by Mr. Madoff and sold through Fairfield Greenwich. The shares offered by Neue Privat and Nomura were leveraged three times -- meaning $3 of borrowed money was added to every $1 of capital invested in order to magnify returns, greatly increasing the potential losses for those investors." (WSJ)
Unicredit. The Italian firm had unspecified amount with Madoff via its Dublin-based Pioneer alt-asset group. (MarketWatch)
Sen. Frank Lautenberg. Unspecified (Newsday).
Robert Lappin Foundation in Massachusetts closed its doors today and is citing relationship to Maddoff fund. $8MM foundation plus personal holdings. Foundation supported Jewish organizations throughout North Shore of Massachusetts. (source: Jewish Journal)
Wunderkinder Foundation, a Steven Spielberg charity. In the past the foundation "appears to have invested a significant portion of its assets with Mr. Madoff, based on regulatory filings. In 2006, the Madoff firm accounted for roughly 70% of the foundation's interest and dividend income, according to regulatory filings. A representative of Mr. Spielberg confirmed that the foundation has suffered losses on its investments with the Madoff firm. He said he didn't know the size of the losses and couldn't comment further, including on whether Mr. Spielberg had any of his own money invested with the Madoff firm." WSJ
BNP Paribas. "BNP Paribas's exposure, the extent of which is not clear, may stem from BNP's lending relationship with a fund of funds that was a big Madoff client, said people familiar with the matter. A BNP spokeswoman declined to comment." WSJ: BNP, France's largest bank by market value, said it could lose as much as 350 million euros as a result of the alleged fraud. The bank said it has no investment of its own in the hedge funds managed by Bernard Madoff Investment Services. BNP Paribas, however, said it is exposed to these funds through its trading business and lending to hedge funds that had invested in Madoff's funds.
Ira Rennert. Vicky Ward of Vanity Fair, said on CNBC."Heavily, heavily invested."
Englebardt family of Los Angeles. (Reader)
Swiss private bank Reichmuth & Co. "said its clients had an exposure of some 385 million Swiss francs to Madoff funds. The bank said Reichmuth Matterhorn, a fund that invests in other hedge funds, faced a potential loss of about 8.6% on its exposure to Madoff. That amount represented about 3.5% of the 11 billion Swiss Francs Reichmuth & Co. has under management, the bank said." (WSJ)
Union Bancaire Privee. UBP spokesman said the bank's clients have "limited" losses related to Madoff, but wouldn't be more specific or comment further. (WSJ)
EIM Group, the European investment manager with about $11 billion in assets, had a number of non-U.S. investors into funds overseen by Mr. Madoff, according to people familiar with the matter. Overall, EIM assets at risk are less than 2% of what it manages, which means losses could top $200 million. (WSJ).
UBS: ""Very limited" direct exposure to the Madoff funds...But the Zurich-based bank's wealth-management arm helped clients in Europe and possibly elsewhere invest with Mr. Madoff, according to investment professionals in Europe who spoke with some of these clients. UBS is currently reviewing its clients' exposure to Mr. Madoff's funds, according to the person familiar with the matter. The person said the funds weren't on UBS's list of "recommended" investments for its U.S. clients, but that they may have been among the firm's suggested investments for overseas clients." (WSJ)
Stephen A. Fine, president of Biltrite Corp. (Reader)
Avram and Carol Goldberg, former owners of the Stop & Shop supermarket chain (Reader)
Helfman family of Miami. (Reader)
Saul Katz, co-owner of the New York Mets.
Irwin Kellner, of Port Washington. (Reader)
Carl and Ruth Shapiro, donors to Brandeis University, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The Boston Globe reported on Saturday that the Shapiro family foundation lost almost half its money, or about $145 million.
Fairfield County, Connecticut. Bloomberg: First Selectman Ken Flatto and other elected officials in Fairfield, Connecticut, thought the 58,000- person town’s pension fund was holding up well amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The 18 percent decline in total assets since the end of June looked smart compared with the 31 percent plunge in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, and total assets of $286 million left a cushion over the $270 million of estimated liabilities. Flatto’s mood darkened yesterday when he heard Bernard Madoff, a Wall Street executive who oversaw $42 million of the assets, had been arrested and charged with fraud. “We classified this on our portfolio as one of the more conservative investments,” Flatto said in an interview. “You rely on your experts and your managers to be honest.”
Various Boston families: The Boston Globe.
More as we get them...
You replied: That's quite an assumption
Obviously if you have to make a comment like that - you truly do not understand what it means to be rich!!!
If it sounds too good to be true, odds are that it is. With any investment, there’s always risk. When you give your money to a crook, the risk rises considerably.
WOW, Hildy,
What a truly unnecessary thing to say to someone who was being nothing but friendly towards you.
Exactly!
I know a guy who was in Bernie’s fund via another fund that invested with Bernie. This guy had a $500,000 401k that’s probably torched. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.......unfortunately this guy was smart enough to make the money in the first place but not smart enough to understand where his “investment” was actually residing.
True, but when the nature of the risk is fraudulently understated, that undermines confidence in the market, and things like this are very much the reason we are in the economic dire straits we are in today.
No, I know what it means..the fact you think you know the happiness level of others means you truly do not understand much of anything. That being said, if you look at that list, so much was lost in OTHER FUNDS...and who invests in those other funds? Your neighbors, your cousins, maybe even you through your own brokers. If one part of the system fails...alot of innocents get hurt. Did you see the charities that will no longer be helping the needy? There are and will be many, many, VICTIMS of this and if you can’t even have empathy at that level, then I seriously doubt the “wealth” you speak of.
what did I say? Homeschoolmama said that she’s probably wealthier (happier) than the financially wealthy people on that list. I find that a mind-boggling assumption. what was wrong with that?
Jewish people stealing from each other. Don’t they have a law against that kind of stuff.
If I might interrupt the food fight for just one moment, you have raised a good point. It is the "Funds of Funds" which have missed the boat on this issue and there is a school of thought which says that these are the guys which will be sued by the "victims" in order to recoup losses as Madoff has apparently also lost everything and is thus not a viable option for an attempt to recoup losses.
Funds like Tremont, Fairfield Greenwich, Banco Santander.....these are they guys who need to be fried. They are paid substantial sums of money to evaluate operators like Madoff and to invest wisely. As I mentioned to you in a previous post, there have been suspicions about Madoff's practices around for some time and the "other funds" chose to ignore them and go with Madoff.
So to summarize, the list undoubtedly contains people who've been unknowingly and unfairly bilked but there are also other players on the list who have a case to answer.
Huge Jewish exposure.....wow.
Note to Spielberg and other Hollywood limo liberals : In the average Hollywood movie Mr. Madoff would be a dramatic hero. The cops and bean counters going after him would be seen as "not cool".
Spielberg - is there any chance that you've reaped what you've sown?
My guess is, "yes".
Sadly, so have the rest of us - with the creeps of the world emboldened by Hollywood's love of the underbelly criminal examples.
Thyssen Family .. This is the one and same German corporate name that goes back to deep and dark Nazi prime contract work. Ironic jewish revenge.
You take the cash infusions from new investors to give great returns to old investors who want redemptions and word spreads how well you are doing and the money keeps coming in until the obligations outpace the new cash coming in ....which is more likely in a downturn like we are in where folks are sitting on their cash.....or if the manager has been stealing too much.
We had a similar thing here in Nashville with only around 100 million and the perp eventually blew his head off. He had been known as a big philanthropist around here till then with his subterfuge.
Sorry to see the usual class envy/conspiracy/whatever on FR like these folks deserved to be fleeced.
Someone sets up an investments shoppe and one has reasonable expectations they will not lose all of your money....at least not through fraud....bad investments is more understandable.
Did you also see today all the foreign investment funds that were involved. This was huge...and, again, many many victims. To start making this a class envy fight diminishes us. This is a fight for capitalism...right now, capitalism is losing.
you get that sorta thing here sometimes
it’s impossible to know everything a money manage does with one’s investments
i’m 51, this sort of thing is a major part of my life, managing investments and I can tell anyone I don’t know exactly what this or that equities or income platform is doing right now
i try to watch their performance and track record and ratings
when one uses a private closed fund or group or hedge etc, then you are almost just along for the ride and banking on performance...which in this case was pure fraud
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