Funds Management

ASIC has obtained urgent Federal Court orders to preserve investors’ funds obtained by a Queensland based company which is holding out that it operates a mutual fund when it is not licensed to do so. The company has a name disturbingly similar to that of a licence holder and ASIC says that clients have handed over funds to the wrong company as a result of confusion over the names.

New Zealand's Serious Fraud Office has charged John Bradley and Jacqueline Lyndsay Bradley with using companies they controlled to mastermind a ponzi scheme that cost more than 85 investors more than NZD15 million.

Barbra (sic) Alexander ran a business called APS Funding. She also presented a radio programme called "MoneyDots") which was syndicated across the USA and overseas. But she didn't keep her two lives separate.

The USA's Securities and Exchange Commission has filed fraud charges against Kevin H Blood of Arizona, the majority shareholder in Capital Wealth Management based in Phoenix. He's been barred from the US financial advisers industry for life.

Trikona Advisers Limited ("TAL") today said that it will lodge a claim with the London Court of International Arbitration for GBP112,000,000 for an allegedly unlawful attempt by Trikona Trinity Capital Plc (Code "TRC" on AIM) to terminate its management agreement with the Fund six years early. The agreement was for ten years from 16 April 2006, says TAL.

As the credit crisis bit, investors in funds started to demand their money back. All over the world, fund managers froze repayments - called "redemptions" in the industry. But as property prices have recently shown an upward trend, some would think it was safe to go back into the water. That's not a universally held opinion, as the decision to close Colonial First State's Mortgage Income Fund shows. Or is Commonwealth getting a jump on the regulators?

More evidence that Hong Kong is fighting off bids for its crown as Asia-Pacific's primary financial centre as Omnium opens in Hong Kong with two major contracts.

Can it get any worse for the banks? Each time the bottom is seemingly reached, someone digs the pit a little bit deeper. The list of Madoff's victims is beginning to look like yet another serious blow to banks - and the governments that are rescuing them.

Bernard L Madoff, founder of Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities, a trading "hedge fund" has been arrested amid accusations of a USD50 milliard fraud.