Word: macks
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...rookie was handed a case involving suspicious trading activity possibly based on someone tipping off Pequot Capital Management, Inc., a $7.4 billion Westport, Conn., hedge fund, to an impending General Electric purchase of Heller Financial. That someone, Aguirre soon believed, was most likely none other than John Mack. Pequot's CEO Arthur J. Samberg, according to the Senate report, was one of the first people Mack contacted after returning from Switzerland in late June of 2001, where Mack had interviewed to become CEO of Credit Suisse First Boston (now Credit Suisse), which happened to be advising Heller...
...Mack told Samberg he wanted to invest $5 million in a closed Pequot fund, and he was also able to invest in another equity fund (Fresh Start), the only individual allowed to do so, according to the Senate report. Within days Pequot, at Samberg's direction, started aggressively buying Heller stock, while shorting GE. In a matter of a few weeks, and after the acquisition was announced on July 30, 2001, Pequot had scooped up $18 million in earnings, a performance that caught the attention of the New York Stock Exchange...
...Aguirre thought this was reason enough to depose Mack, and his supervisors initially seemed supportive, until outside lawyers started contacting them, including enforcement division director Linda Thomsen, and her deputy Paul Berger. Aguirre's supervisors have all denied to Congress they were influenced by anyone, and insist they had a principled objection to taking Mack's testimony, largely because it was insufficiently supported by existing evidence...
...Mack was in fact eventually questioned by the SEC on August 1, 2006, more than 13 months after Aguirre had first proposed, but the Pequot investigation was officially closed on November 30 of that same year. The SEC's case closing recommendation, dated November 30, 2005, states that "the staff has been unable to find any evidence that Pequot had information regarding the merger between GE and Heller before the merger was publicly announced, much less that anyone tipped Pequot or Samberg about the merger in advance of its announcement. The staff's investigation found it extremely unlikely that Mack...
...fixing those problems will take real reforms," said Senator Charles Grassley when he introduced the executive summary into the Congressional record on August 3. Among other conclusions, Grassley said the report found that Aguirre's firing was "closely connected" to his objections to the "special treatment" afforded to John Mack. Grassley complained that "Mack's prominence protected him from the initial SEC inquiry, protection that would not have been afforded him had he been from Main Street rather than Wall Street." The Senator also lambasted the SEC's inspector general for having made "no attempt to conduct a serious, credible...