More than 50,000 Greeks marched on the nation’s parliament to protest austerity measures required by bailout agreements, according to Reuters: “‘We can’t just sit by idly and do nothing while the troika and the government destroy our lives,’ said Dimitra Kontouli, a 49-year-old local government employee whose salary was cut to 1,100 euros a month from 1,600 euros previously.”
Spain is moving towards accepting European bailouts, even as protests in Madrid turned violent and politicians in the Catalonia region called for secession.
“It’s just amazing how Libor fixing can make you that much money or lose if opposite.” So said Tan Chi Min, a former Royal Bank of Scotland trader in a conversation with traders at other banks, in an affidavit reviewed by Bloomberg. “It’s a cartel now in London.” Tan is suing RBS in Singapore for wrongful dismissal after being fired for attempting to manipulate Libor.
SAC Capital hedge fund manager Michael Steinberg is said to be an unindicted co-conspirator in the government’s insider trading case against hedge fund managers Anthony Chiasson and Todd Newman and technology analyst Jon Horvath. A Sept. 6 filing, prosecutors added four unindicted co-conspirators to their case; the names were blacked out in the filing, but one of the four was “the portfolio manager to whom Jon Horvath reported at his hedge fund.” That person was Mr. Steinberg, according to unnamed sources cited by Bloomberg.
Part two of Reuters massive, massively awesome profile of Peregrine Financial Group founder Russell Wasendorf Sr., who pleaded guilty to stealing millions from clients at his Iowa-based futures brokerage. Part one is here.
Former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov is suing the bank for $2.4 million in legal fees incurred while defending himself against charges that he stole code from the firm before leaving Goldman to join a high-frequency trading startup. Mr. Aleynikov was convicted by a federal jury in 2010, but won an appeal; he now faces charges in Manhattan.
Bureaucratic infighting has roiled government investigations into money-laundering charges at HSBC, according to Reuters.
Former UBS trader Kweku Adoboli told colleagues he was reporting fictitious trades, British prosecutors said. Mr. Adoboli is being tried on charges of fraud and false accounting over unauthorized trades on which UBS lost $2.3 billion.
Matt Levine on Securities and Exchange Commission charges against Hold Brothers On-Line Investment Services: “This is fundamental forces of some algorithms versus other algorithms, and each of those algorithms represents in some imperfect and abstracted way “supply and demand,” but not in a way a human could formulate in his mind or feel in his heart.”
Germany is expected to enact legislation that would rein in high-frequency trading, according to The Times.
Have you heard the one about the British hedge fund manager (Crispin Odey) who’s spending $210,000 on the stone to be used to construct a luxury chicken coop?
