Why Citigroup Paid the SEC $180 Million Over MAT/ASTA
(Aug 2015)
I. Introduction
This week Citigroup paid $180 million to the SEC to settle allegations that Citigroup improperly sold high risk hedge funds known as MAT, ASTA and Falcon. The SEC Order is available to view online.
The SEC Order makes clear that Citigroup did not effectively monitor the portfolio manager or the sales force as it sold billions of dollars of high risk MAT ASTA funds with false and misleading sales presentations. In the end, Citigroup lost hundreds of wealthy clients and likely...
The Worst Investment in the World! Behringer Harvard's Priority Income Fund
(Jun 2015)
I. Introduction
What could be worse than a non-traded REIT? Well, REIT-sponsor Behringer Harvard has managed to create something even worse than a non-traded REIT: The Priority Income Fund. On May 9, 2013, Behringer Harvard and the manager of publicly traded BDCs, Prospect Capital Management, announced the initial public offering for their new joint-effort Priority Senior Secured Income Fund (PSSI) now renamed Priority Income Fund.i
The best thing that can be said of the Priority Income Fund...
Nicolas Schorsch and American Realty Capital Lay Another Egg
(Jun 2015)
GNL: American Realty Capital Lays Another Egg
On Tuesday, non-traded REIT American Realty Capital Global Trust Inc. - rechristened Global Net Lease, Inc. - began trading on the NYSE under the ticker GNL. GNL is at least the 42nd non-traded REIT to have listed, or merged into or been acquired by another REIT since 1997 and adds to the mounting wealth toll non-traded REITs have extracted from unsophisticated investors.
My co-authors and I have determined that the non-traded REIT industry has...
Oil and Gas DPPs From Just Two Sponsors Have Caused $3.7 Billion in Losses
(Feb 2015)
We have written extensively about direct participation programs, or DPPs. See our blog posts on non-traded REITs and our discussion about equipment leasing DPPs. Oil and gas DPPs are another strain of the DPP epidemic: illiquid exposure to an existing underlying asset, loaded with confiscatory fees, conflicts of interest and unnecessary risk.
Oil and gas DPPs use some of investors' money to drill and operate oil and gas wells. Oil and gas DPPs are sponsored and managed either by investment...
UBS Puerto Rico's Bond Fund Debacle: What We Know so Far
(Feb 2015)
Over the past year, we've posted a dozen short commentaries to our blog post here. We thought it would be helpful to summarize what we know so far. This summary and our prior UBS Puerto Rico blog posts are available in Spanish. You can find all the Spanish-language blog posts by clicking here.
We discussed the national exposure of the UBS Puerto Rico losses in October 2013 in Trouble in Paradise: UBS Puerto Rico Bond Fund Investors Hit Hard. The losses only got worse thereafter. In calendar...
UBS Puerto Rican Funds Did Not Belong in Puerto Rican Investors' Portfolios
(Feb 2015)
Over the past year, we've posted a dozen commentaries about the UBS Puerto Rican closed end bond funds to our blog.
In Taxes, Puerto Rico Municipal Bonds and the UBS Funds we show that preferential tax treatment for Puerto Rican investments cannot justify what would otherwise be unsuitable concentrations of investors' portfolios in Puerto Rico municipal bonds. We focused our attention in that post on mainland municipal bond alternatives to Puerto Rican municipal bonds and showed that even...
15 Days in Puerto Rico Cost UBS Clients Over $1 Billion
(Dec 2014)
We've shown in recent posts that UBS underwrote $1.7 billion of unmarketable ERS bonds and bought them into the UBS PR Funds. You can find our earlier blog posts here. UBS made room these ERS bonds by selling out of the Funds other bonds UBS didn't underwrite. UBS bought the ERS bonds it underwrote in 2008 because there was no other market for the bonds it was underwriting.
Recently we illustrated how UBS-underwritten conflicted bonds purchased by UBS into the funds in 2008 caused losses in...
What Hell Hath UBS Puerto Rico Wrought
(Nov 2014)
We've shown in recent posts that UBS underwrote $1.7 billion of unmarketable ERS and $1.35 billion of COFINA bonds and bought them into the UBS PR Funds in 2007 and 2008. You can find our earlier blog posts on Puerto Rican Funds. UBS made room for these ERS and COFINA bonds by selling out of the Funds, roughly $3 billion of other bonds UBS didn't underwrite. UBS bought the ERS and COFINA bonds it underwrote in 2007 and 2008, because there was no other market for the bonds it was...
UBS PR Funds Also Bought $1.35 Billion of UBS Underwritten COFINA Bonds in 2007 and 2008
(Nov 2014)
Yesterday in our post "UBS Succumbed to Conflicts and Purchased $1.7 Billion of Employee Retirement System Bonds into its Puerto Rican Municipal bond Funds in 2008", we showed that UBS underwrote $1.7 billion of unmarketable ERS bonds and bought them into the UBS PR Funds in 2008. Today, we show similar conflicts led UBS to underwrite unmarketable 2007 and 2008 Puerto Rico Sales Tax Financing Corporation (COFINA) bonds and stuff them into the Funds. COFINA issued two series of bonds in 2007...
