It was not only banks that endured a tough 2012. As the year drew to a close, some hedge fund managers were also licking their wounds. An insider-trading probe at top US hedge fund SAC Capital is a concern. In late November 2012, the firm said that it might face civil fraud charges from the SEC. Also in 2012, Raj Gupta, a former main board Goldman Sachs director, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for leaking insider information to his friend, and current prison inmate, Raj Rajaratman, co-founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund. And while we are on the subject of Goldman Sachs, did any devoted readers notice that Pierre-Henri Flamand, the former head of the principal strategies group at the US investment bank, quietly closed his European event-driven hedge fund, Edoma, two years after opening it in London with over $2 billion under management. Investors are said to have been less than enamoured of the former golden boy’s performance after the fund lost some 8% of its value.
And talking of Goldman guys who land at hedge funds, Manny Roman, a former Goldman partner, and co-CEO of the hedge fund GLG, has been promoted to be chief executive designate of Man Group as a crumpled Peter Clarke, the former CEO, totters off to spend more time with his family.