The complaint further alleges that Tournant, Taylor, and Bond-Nelson then made multiple, ultimately unsuccessful, efforts to conceal their misconduct from the SEC, including false testimony and meetings in vacant construction sites to discuss sending their assets overseas. Investors lost billions of dollars, the SEC complaint details. Allianz Fires 2 Asset Managers Who Ran Group of Collapsed Investment Funds Tournant, who is fighting the charges, was ordered released on a $20 million bond at a hearing Tuesday afternoon, where his lawyer told the judge that prosecutors had been investigating for more than a year. "The governments attempt to characterize them as such is not only unfairly damaging to Gregs reputation and livelihood, but extremely dangerous to the market as a whole," they continue. Tournant himself was heavily invested in the funds he managed and lost money along with clients, according to a person familiar with the matter. <>stream Tournant and Taylor prospered at Allianz during the long bull market that followed the Great Recession. Roman Frenkel was a first-hand witness to the Structured Alpha teams earlier failure when he worked at Innovative Options Management, the small Miami firm that Taylor founded and Tournant helped run briefly while continuing to manage money for Allianz. Every single time we greatly benefited from the higher levels of volatility and were able to generate much higher returns in the following two or three months after the draw-down, Tournant said in a 2016 marketing video. Aug. 4 Allianz discloses that the SEC is investigating. Investors were told the funds employed options that included hedges to protect against market crashes, but prosecutors said fund managers repeatedly failed to buy those hedges. Investigators said the misrepresentations began in 2014, and helped Allianz generate more than $400 million of net profit. They face long prison terms but could get far less time for their cooperation. While the losses are regrettable, they are not the result of any crime. Allianz Global Investors US pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud and agreed to pay about $US6 billion to resolve the case. L@IW$',Bt^[J[>}+$"j|\,/cmhyqyRdY'yD,1. R&qr`$."Eb+[#iw}|`9 pT(G!t'm While Allianz made no secret of this arrangement, angry clients would later claim it was a recipe for bigger risks. A chart containing the names, ages, residences, charges and maximum penalties for the defendants is attached. Tournant, the chief investment officer at Miami-based Structured Alpha, spent years "smoothing" performance data, lying about hedges against market downturns, and pretending risk managers at Allianz Global Investors US were carefully monitoring his every move, prosecutors charged in an indictment. That change was not disclosed to investors, prosecutors allege. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Grocery Chain Accuses Chubb of Lowballing, Fla. 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This case is being handled by SDNYs Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force. 6LinkedIn 8 Email Updates. Careers have been upended. . Secure .gov websites use HTTPS Chief Executive Officer Oliver Baete expressed regret in February for Structured Alphas losses and said they will have a significant impact on the compensation of its directors. The U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission have opened investigations. Lead manager Greg Tournant joined Allianz in 2002 and started the structured products group in 2005. Assistant U.S. Structured Alphas performance was solid. Another investor, the board of a pension fund run by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, filed a lawsuit in 2020 that purported to identify what went wrong. Four billion dollars wrong so far, with outside estimates that it could grow much larger. Regulators said the misconduct included when Tournant and Bond-Nelson altered more than 75 risk reports before sending them to investors. Help using this website - Accessibility statement. Tournant's lawyers, Seth Levine and Daniel Alonso, said the investor losses were "regrettable" but did not result from a crime. They were marketed in particular to typically conservative U.S. pension funds, from those . Tournant and Taylor declined to comment. Another investor, the board of a pension fund run by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, filed a lawsuit in 2020 that purported to identify what went wrong. The Aspen Daily News has chronicled Tournants real estate dealings with Snowmass Club condominium properties in 2016, 2017 and 2019. Exclusive news, data and analytics for financial market professionals, Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Tom Sims and Alexander Huebner in Munich Access unmatched financial data, news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop, web and mobile. $L% x-GU f*na"WHn^>EmI`*f@eKh rH}={q3P3B"27Uh*_.~IJ@2H_,@S.)(|s vwA\r[9S8R`'ow\5&Lx`LUC^-rHAeh0x*od{dt" {+PsCBjT0b1F|=]dK2D"`7e >a\!M/69TS.lKk`4.Gz6NEfI:LX.wS06;.>k"j7v1r.>0t`1VJ>?=[yE Access unmatched financial data, news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop, web and mobile. Tournant, with Allianz Global Investors since 2002, founded the so-called Structured Alpha funds in 2005. The portfolio managers then used manipulated numbers to justify exorbitant fees to line their own pockets to the tune of $550 million between 2014 and 2020. Allianz Global Investors U.S. LLC Also Charged with Securities Fraud, Agrees to Plead Guilty. Japan's Nissan Motor on Tuesday unveiled a new electric sport-utility vehicle (SUV) at the Shanghai auto show as it pledged its commitment to the Chinese auto market, which it said was likely to continue to pioneer the rise of electric cars. As alleged, Tournant and his co-conspirators also provided investors with altered documents that were sent to investors to hide the true riskiness of the funds investments, including that they were buying cheaper hedges. Reuters provides business, financial, national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals, the world's media organizations, industry events and directly to consumers. According to an initial report by Bloomberg, the trio used to manage the Structured Alpha funds, but all left the company in December 2021, per company filings. Tournant faces charges of conspiracy, securities fraud and obstruction of justice charges. In late 2015, Mr Tournant allegedly grew frustrated with the cost of hedging, which was eating into returns. And when the storm came in March 2020, when the COVID-19 crash hit, these investors got soaked and lost billions. All structured data from the file namespace is available under the Creative Commons CC0 License; all unstructured text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Be the first to know what's happening as it's happening. Required fields are marked *. Instead, US authorities say, Greg Tournant sold lies to investors that cost customers, and now Allianz, billions of dollars, and resulted in a guilty plea to federal charges of securities fraud by Allianz Global Investors US. While they were able to solicit over $11 billion in investments by the end of 2019 and earn over $550 million in fees as a result of their lies, they lost over $5 billion in investor funds when the market volatility of March 2020 exposed the true risk of their products," said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SECs Division of Enforcement. Investor lawsuits and settlements have piled up. He was at the top of the class, and his work was excellent in all respects. The 55-year-old investment manager now faces up to 40 years in prison on five separate counts of fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Share & Print. Gregoire Tournant, the former chief investment officer who created and oversaw the now-defunct Structured Alpha funds, was also indicted for fraud, conspiracy and obstruction, while two other. 3 Ways to Steer Clients Through a Challenging Economy. At Allianz Global Investors U.S., Tournant and his Structured Alpha team were incentivized to pursue outsized returns. Get the insurance industry's trusted newsletter, Your email address will not be published. They included dozens of public and private pension plans for the likes of Blue Cross & Blue Shield and New Yorks Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Its Alpha U.S. Equity 250 fund posted average annual returns of 10.9% between early 2005 and June 2018, compared with the S&P 500s 8.7% average annualized return over the same period, according to a 2018 marketing document. Postal Inspection Service and the Special Agents of the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York investigated this case. The group still operates 25 funds in its Structured Alpha family. Essentially, the Structured Alpha fund was sold as a bill of goods that would expose investors to the benefits of the S&P 500 index while protecting them from any sort of market crash by. By the end of March, Allianz announced it was liquidating two Structured Alpha funds. The conviction carried a 10-year ban on Allianz Global Investors providing advisory services to U.S.-registered investment funds. Tournant, of Basalt, Colorado, surrendered to authorities on Tuesday morning. Williams said the fine was significantly reduced because of Allianz's compensation to investors. Structured Alphas troubles continued after his departure. According to a law enforcement official, the only local legal interaction Tournant has experienced was in 2014, when he was issued a warning for failing to obey a traffic control device in Aspen. Allianz was confident enough in Tournants team that it let them charge a performance fee alone of 25% to 30% of net capital appreciation above a benchmark. More than 100 institutional investors, representing more than 100,000 individuals, were victims of this scheme. An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. The U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission have opened investigations. Investors allege Allianz and Structured Alpha abandoned risk controls and turned a challenging situation into a disaster by doubling down on a bad strategy. May The U.S. Department of Justice approaches Allianz for information on the funds. Official websites use .gov The most comprehensive solution to manage all your complex and ever-expanding tax and compliance needs. 149 (DLC), Conspiracy to commit securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, and wire fraud, 18 U.S.C. 371 (Count Five), United States v. Trevor Taylor, 22 Cr. Instead of being part of the companys planned expansion to waterfront offices, Frenkel ended up helping liquidate the business. Former colleagues have turned on him, as has Allianz. 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