Article: Cohodes vs Home Capital: Testing the short seller’s claims

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Cohodes vs Home Capital: Testing the short seller’s claims

Amber Kanwar, 27 October 2016

San Francisco-based short seller Marc Cohodes has been shorting Home Capital Group since 2014. He made a number of claims, and raised questions, about Home Capital in an interview with BNN this week. We gave the mortgage lender an opportunity to respond. Below, you’ll find Home Capital’s comments.

Cohodes says Operation Trillium was Home Capital’s response to discovering mortgages that had poor underwriting standards. He believes it was initiated a year before the suspended brokers were announced. “[Operation Trillium] is somewhere between a cover up and a remediation effort,” said Cohodes in an interview with BNN. He believes it was initiated a year before Home Capital disclosed the suspended brokers.

Home Capital did not confirm the existence of Operation Trillium and instead provided this comment: “We refer investors who are interested in the facts to our quarterly disclosure, which includes information on the performance of the mortgages originated by the suspended brokers, the value of loans outstanding that were originated by those brokers, and the progress of our review of those mortgages.”
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Article: Investigators track millions of dollars from Russian tax fraud coming to Canada

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Investigators track millions of dollars from Russian tax fraud coming to Canada

DANIEL LEBLANC, 27 October 2016

Investigators have tracked millions of dollars associated with an elaborate tax fraud in Russia to bank accounts in Canada, bolstering their call for Ottawa to adopt legislation to freeze the assets of corrupt foreign officials.

Anglo-American financier Bill Browder and a team of investigators and lawyers compiled the data on the transfers of the funds, which indicate a clear Canadian connection to a $230-million (U.S.) swindle in 2007 by Russian officials who used his Russian-based hedge fund, Hermitage Capital Management. Continue reading “Article: Investigators track millions of dollars from Russian tax fraud coming to Canada”

Article: Inside Billionaire Steve Cohen’s Comeback

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Inside Billionaire Steve Cohen’s Comeback

In 2013, an insider-trading scandal brought down his hugely successful hedge fund. In his first interview about the firm since then, Cohen tells Fortune how he’s rebuilding for redemption.

On the night of Jan. 8, 2016, Steven A. Cohen walked into a steak house just east of Times Square. It was Friday, and the stock market had just closed out a brutally bloody first week of the year. But no matter: This was Exoneration Day, according to Cohen’s friend and former investor Anthony Scaramucci, and they were celebrating.

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Article: FINRA Merrill’s system failures produced millions of inaccurate trading records

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FINRA: Merrill’s system failures produced millions of inaccurate trading records

Kenneth Corbin

OnWallStreet, 19 October 2016

Staffers at FINRA’s Department of Market Regulation identified a number of reporting errors in the data Merrill submitted to FINRA’s Order Audit Trail System, or OATS, and cited the firm for failures relating to its supervision practices and its maintenance of books and records.

In a statement announcing the settlement, Thomas Gira, executive vice president and head of market regulation at FINRA, notes the importance of maintaining accurate data through the OATS market-surveillance program to detect signs of market manipulation and other irregularities.

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Article: FINRA fines Merrill Lynch $2.8 million for reporting violations

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FINRA fines Merrill Lynch $2.8 million for reporting violations

Elizabeth Dilts

Reuters, 18 October 2016

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch $2.8 million on Tuesday for what it called systemic violations in record-keeping and how the firm reported trades and order audit trail system data.

The allegations involve trade and order audit data that brokerages submit to FINRA, and which the regulator uses to detect, among other things, possible market manipulation.

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Article: MARC COHODES – INTERTAIN GROUP LTD: A HOUSE OF CARDS

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MARC COHODES – INTERTAIN GROUP LTD: A HOUSE OF CARDS

ValueWalk, 18 October 2016

In early 2014, Intertain was created with assets from Amaya Inc., with Amaya becoming Intertain’s largest shareholder David Baazov – Amaya’s CEO – has been charged with insider trading by the Quebec AMF
AMP claims that Baazov was part of a network of insiders who used secret codes to conceal trades about companies planning to merge or acquire other companies. John Fitzgerald (also known as “Fitzy”) was named CEO of Intertain. Fitzy has allegedly been involved with penny stock promoters and has previously been named as a defendant in shareholder lawsuits.

Keith Laslop was named CFO of Intertain Laslop has links to Gerova Financial Group, whose top officers (John Galanis et al) were by the SEC for fraud. Laslop himself was named in multiple lawsuit arising out of the Gerova fraud allegations. Intertain’s roll up strategy. In early 2015, Intertain acquired Jackpotjoy and other companies for £4258 million plus earn-outs if and when Jackpotjoy meets earnings benchmarks
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Article: High-profile short-seller takes aim at five Canadian companies

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High-profile short-seller takes aim at five Canadian companies
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LUKE KAWA, 05 October 2016

Twenty five minutes into a profanity-ridden presentation at Jim Grant’s Fall 2016 Investing Conference in New York City, Marc Cohodes paused his speech to don a red jacket emblazoned with a maple leaf on the right breast.

So attired, the short seller proceeded to launch into his bearish theses for the collection of Canadian companies he’s betting against.

Mr. Cohodes, the former managing general partner at Copper River Management and current chicken farmer at Alder Lane Farm in California, revisited the cases for why he’s short Valeant Pharmaceuticals Inc., The Intertain Group Ltd., Concordia International Corp., and Home Capital Group Inc.

At the conference on Tuesday, he unveiled a short position in Equitable Group Inc., a Toronto-based provider of mortgage financing. The company disputes Mr. Cohodes’s claims about its vulnerabilities.
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Article: Deutsche Bank Charged By Italy For Market Manipulation, Creating False Accounts | Zero Hedge

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Deutsche Bank Charged By Italy For Market Manipulation, Creating False Accounts | Zero Hedge

Tyler Durden, 01 October 2016

For Deutsche Bank, when it rains, it pours, even when everyone tries to come to its rescue.

One day after its stock soared from all time lows, following what so far appears to have been a fabricated report sourced by AFP which relied on Twitter as a source that the DOJ would reduce its RMBS settlement amount with Deutsche Bank from $14 billion to below $6 billion (and which neither the DOJ nor Deutsche Bank have confirmed for obvious reasons), moments ago Bloomberg reported that six current and former managers of Deutsche Bank, including Michele Faissola, Michele Foresti and Ivor Dunbar, were charged in Milan for colluding to falsify the accounts of Italy’s third-biggest bank, Monte Paschi (which itself is so insolvent it is currently scrambling to finalize a private sector bailout) and manipulate the market. Two former executives at Nomura Holdings Inc. and five at Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena were also charged. Continue reading “Article: Deutsche Bank Charged By Italy For Market Manipulation, Creating False Accounts | Zero Hedge”

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