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The man who lost $6 billion

阅读() 评论() 发表时间：2008年07月29日 12:23

本文地址：http://qzone.qq.com/blog/510113242-1217305416

Here's a certain allure to the crchetype of the rogue trader.  As Jane Austen might have said,it is a truth universally acknowledged that aman who singlehandedly loses a large forture,especially one that wasn't of his own making,must be way more interesting than the average man.After all,not just any old someone gets the chance to destroy massive amounts of capital,let alone force an entire company,and maybe even the entire company,and maybe even the entire market,to the edge of disaster-or over it.Those who do become par of business lore:Nick Leeson,Yasuo Hamanaka,Brian Hunter,Jerome Kerviel.
  But does the reality measure up to the myth?
  Brian Hunter,the former head natural-gas trader for Amaranth,the$10 billion hedge fund that infamously imploded in the fall of 2006 after Hunter's bets on the price of natural gas went spectacularly wrong,has earned himself a permanent spot among the legends.Hunter has been accused of loseing upwards of $6 billion,which until Kerviel came along was the biggest loss by a single trader in the history of securities markets.Business Week recently included him in its"Rogues' Gallery of Traders,"which the magazine explained was a "notorious list of fraudulent trades."Dealbreaker.com likes to call him the "detroyer of all worlds."Hunter is facing accusations involving market manipulation by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission(FERC)and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission(CFTC),a civil case brought by a former Amaranth investor,and a consolidated class action case.
  Fittingly,Hunter is an international man of mystery,We do know that he is young-he was a mere 32 when Amaranth collapsed.We know that he is rich.He made roughly $100 million in 2005,the year before his luck ran out.But we don't know his view of events or even what he looks like,because Hunter hasn't talked or allowed anyone to take hin picture.He likes to greet reporters who show up looking for him and tell them that Brian Hunter isn't there.
  So Forture went in serch of Brian Hunter,not just because we were curious to see what he looked like(no,we didn't get his picture either)but because we wanter to know who he is.Is Hunter the sort of person who,after losing billions of other people's dollars,is penitent about it?(Not really)Can a trader who loses billions get a job managing money again?(Yes,but...)Does the ability to lose billions require any special personality traits?(Not really.)
  And the biggest question of all:What if,behind the loss of a great fortune,there lies something that isn't exactly a crime?
  Stalking Brian Hunter requires a trip to Calgary,Canada,where his new office is a former radio station on the second floor of a three-story building in a somewhat dilapidated part of town.Hunter turns out to be c tall,rangy man,with blue eyes,cruly dirty-blond hair,and a crooked front tooth,He's quite cute ina conventional way.He wears the typical trader uniform of jeans and button-down shirt and drinks Diet Pepsi.He says that even here in his home sity hegoes unrecoginized,though he drives a Bentley Arnage.He says it performs well in the Calgary winter,although it's clear that Hunter,who also owns a Ferrari F430 Spider,really likes expensive cars.
  Hunter is not especially arrogant or intense orbrash.(He is Canadian,after all.)He's a family guy who talks more about his wife,Carrie,and his two young sons than about nights out on the town,and he's more of a math geek than a trader type,("I'm a numbers guy,"he says.)He's most enthusiastic when he's talking about the technical aspects(and are they ever technical)of trading natural gas.But he is self-aware enough to understand the perception of him."I must be a bad guy,"hesays,ticking off the counts against him.Trader.Young.Rich.Hedge fund."You couldn'd ask for a more toxic mix.It's really frustrating,right?"
  That's about as emotional as Hunter gets.But it's clear he doesn't think that what has happened to him is exactlyfair(which explains why he agreed to talk to Forture).He's not upset so much by the charges against him-although he says he's innocent-as he is by the extraneous stuff that has accompanied them.For instance,at a press conference held by the CFTC,a reparter asked if Hunter's passport would betaken away.That would happen only if he were facing criminal charges.But Hunter and his lawyer,Michael Kim,say that the CFTC's enforcement director didn't clarify the distinction.In Hunter's view that left the impression that the charges against him might be,in facet,criminal.(The CFTC says that it never comments on whether there might becriminal interest in a case from another agency and notes that its press release about Hunter says the charges are civil.)
  Hunter also says that before the FERC filed its charges against him,he flew to his lawyer's offices in New York to provide testimony voluntarily.The FERC was supposedly in fact-finding mode.But when Kim saw FERC lawyer Todd Mullins setting up a videocamera in his conference roomand asked what Mullins was doing,Mullins replied,"Oh,this provides superior impeachment material."Kim insister that Hunter not testify,even though Hunter was willing to do so,vecause hethought the FERC was not being impartial.But that wasn't the storu that the FERC told.Instead,FERC chairman Joseph Kelliher told reporters that Hunter"was in the middle of an interview and there was alunch break,and he never came back from lunch."(The FERC declined to comment.)


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