Thursday, December 18, 2008

Madoff Watch '08: European Banks Tally Losses Linked to Madoff

The French Societe Generale totally knew about the problem of Madoff back in 2003--nearly five years ago? What gives?!

So why didn't Société Générale let the rest of the wealth management organizations know of Madoff's obvious incompetence? I know that the world of wealth management/hedge fund management is highly secretive; however, with a problem of this magnitude--shouldn't they have let someone in on the secret? Perhaps Société Générale thought that the others saw Madoff's incompetence, too and were keeping it to themselves.

What do you think? Should there be a statute of reporting amongst hedge fund/wealth management companies?

The red flags at Mr. Madoff’s firm were so obvious, said one banker with direct knowledge of the case, that Société Générale “didn’t hesitate. It was very strange.” While the bank kept the discovery to itself, as is common in the secretive world of wealth management, the information saved Société Générale more than embarrassment: its total exposure to Mr. Madoff’s apparent Ponzi scheme is less than 10 million euros, or $13.8 million

We've referenced an article from The New York Times.



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1 comment:

Unknown said...

Oye Ve!!!!!!!!!!!! It keeps getting better…... this epic Ponzi scheme of Madoff (made-off) continues to fascinate the world. ….A financial holocaust… He managed to lose or steal 50 billion dollars, which can't be easy to do no matter how hard you try….. with a busy looking stock-trading operation occupying the 19th floor, of his building…. and the computers and paperwork of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities (his name is on the door remember!) filled the 18th floor and on the 17th floor was Bernie Madoff's fraud center, occupied by another two dozen staff members but who must have been blinded by some sort of quantitative trading wizardry in order produce that mind-numbing 10-12%… It was called the "hedge fund" floor, where the scam was conceived…….. and nobody else knew?????????????? .not the other 2 dozen employees who worked there?????? I smell rotten lox..I actually feel bad for Charles Ponzi ..Ponzi scammers will have to change their name to “Madoff schemes”.and Mr.Ponzi will disappear into the federal prison vaults….... in researching hedge funds I came across a few books that were also fascinating... Hedge Fund Trading Secrets Revealed by Robert Dorfman... and Confessions of a Street Addict by Jim Cramer....both these books take you on a great ride about hedge funds how they make and lose millions and expose many other scam practices in this game and Dorfman actually teaches his strategies