Stock traders go on trial in multibillion dollar collapse of Archegos fund
A federal jury in Manhattan is set to hear the criminal case against Archegos Capital Management founder Bill Hwang and his former financial officer, Patrick Halligan
NEW YORK (AP) — The owner and chief financial officer of a hedge fund that collapsed when it defaulted on margin calls, costing leading global investment banks and brokerages billions of dollars, were going on trial on fraud charges on Monday.
Bill Hwang, the founder of Archegos Capital Management, and his former CFO Patrick Halligan, were both charged in April 2022 in a scheme that U.S. Attorney Damian Williams claimed “nearly jeopardized our financial system.”
Prosecutors have accused Hwang of lying to banks to get billions of dollars that his New York-based private investment firm then used to inflate the stock price of publicly traded companies and grow its portfolio from $10 billion to $160 billion.
The indictment said that Hwang led market participants to believe the prices of stocks in the fund's portfolio were the product of natural forces of supply and demand, when in reality, they resulted from manipulative trading and deceptive conduct that caused others to trade.
