Collapsed hedge fund owner, ex-CFO charged

NEW YORK — The owner of a New York-based hedge fund that collapsed when it defaulted on margin calls was arrested Wednesday on charges alleging he defrauded leading global investment banks and brokerages of billions of dollars by telling them lies so his private investment firm could grow its portfolio from $10 billion to $160 billion.

The charges unsealed in an indictment in Manhattan federal court named Bill Hwang, the founder of Archegos Capital Management, and his former chief financial officer, Patrick Halligan. They face racketeering conspiracy and fraud charges.

Hwang carried out the fraud from March 2020 to March 2021 by originally investing his personal fortune, which grew from $1.5 billion to over $35 billion, and later the investments he borrowed from major banks and brokerages, which grew from about $10 billion to over $160 billion, the indictment said.

He hid the extent of his market prowess from investors by using derivative securities that had no public disclosure requirement, it said.

“As a result, despite the size of Archegos’s positions, the investing public did not know that Archegos had come to dominate the trading and stock ownership of multiple companies,” the indictment said.

The risky maneuvers made the firm’s portfolio highly vulnerable to price fluctuations in a handful of stocks, causing a flurry of margin calls in late March 2021 that had a destructive domino effect. Over $100 billion in market value disappeared in days for nearly a dozen companies and banks and prime brokers duped by Archegos lost billions, the indictment said.

It said the schemes also caused millions of dollars in losses for innocent Archegos employees who had been required to allocate to the firm a substantial amount of their pay as deferred compensation.

Hwang’s attorney, Lawrence Lustberg, said lawyers were “extremely disappointed” with a prosecution that they believe has “absolutely no factual or legal basis.”