CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Bathroom Off Limits at Archegos When Key Stocks Were On Move
JUST LIKE WORKING IN A MEAT PACKING PLANT
Chris Dolmetsch and Bob Van Voris
Wed, Jun 12, 2024,
(Bloomberg) -- In the months before Archegos Capital Management imploded in March 2021, trading was almost nonstop. One of Bill Hwang’s traders made the mistake of stepping away to use the bathroom when a stock he was watching began to mov
“Bill yelled at us,” former Archegos head trader William Tomita recalled on the witness stand Tuesday at Hwang’s fraud trial. “He raised his voice, and he yelled at us that we can’t just go to the bathroom.”
In his second day of testimony as a star prosecution witness against Hwang, Tomita depicted his former boss as not just a market manipulator but a micromanager who oversaw every detail of trading at his family office and frequently berated his team.
Tomita was closer to Hwang than anybody who has taken the stand, including the other cooperating witness, former risk chief Scott Becker. His testimony, which is expected to continue for several days, is key to connecting the Archegos founder to the government’s charges of fraud, racketeering conspiracy and market manipulation.
Prosecutor Matthew Podolsky on Tuesday walked Tomita through several allegedly manipulative trades. Tomita also offered testimony of how Hwang ran his traders. At the time, most of them were working from home due to the pandemic. But they spent their days in an ongoing Zoom call with Hwang, who dictated their buying and selling from a corporate apartment on Central Park South.
It was via this Zoom that Hwang noticed that trader Peter DeSanto wasn’t at his desk when a stock he was shorting, Rocket Cos., started to move in the wrong direction. DeSanto was in the bathroom.
Inopportune breaks weren’t the only reason Hwang yelled at his team, Tomita said. He also frequently criticized them when they failed to get the prices of targeted stocks to his limit price.
“I remember with the stock Viacom, getting yelled at because I wasn’t aggressive enough,” Tomita said. “I wasn’t buying it in a manner that was moving the stock price as high as he wanted.”
Traders could often tell when Hwang was about to berate them, he said. “Sometimes he didn’t even need to vocalize because on the Zoom he would just glare, and that glance alone meant we were about to get yelled at or he was annoyed,” Tomita testified.
Chris Dolmetsch and Bob Van Voris
Wed, Jun 12, 2024,
(Bloomberg) -- In the months before Archegos Capital Management imploded in March 2021, trading was almost nonstop. One of Bill Hwang’s traders made the mistake of stepping away to use the bathroom when a stock he was watching began to mov
“Bill yelled at us,” former Archegos head trader William Tomita recalled on the witness stand Tuesday at Hwang’s fraud trial. “He raised his voice, and he yelled at us that we can’t just go to the bathroom.”
In his second day of testimony as a star prosecution witness against Hwang, Tomita depicted his former boss as not just a market manipulator but a micromanager who oversaw every detail of trading at his family office and frequently berated his team.
Tomita was closer to Hwang than anybody who has taken the stand, including the other cooperating witness, former risk chief Scott Becker. His testimony, which is expected to continue for several days, is key to connecting the Archegos founder to the government’s charges of fraud, racketeering conspiracy and market manipulation.
Prosecutor Matthew Podolsky on Tuesday walked Tomita through several allegedly manipulative trades. Tomita also offered testimony of how Hwang ran his traders. At the time, most of them were working from home due to the pandemic. But they spent their days in an ongoing Zoom call with Hwang, who dictated their buying and selling from a corporate apartment on Central Park South.
It was via this Zoom that Hwang noticed that trader Peter DeSanto wasn’t at his desk when a stock he was shorting, Rocket Cos., started to move in the wrong direction. DeSanto was in the bathroom.
Inopportune breaks weren’t the only reason Hwang yelled at his team, Tomita said. He also frequently criticized them when they failed to get the prices of targeted stocks to his limit price.
“I remember with the stock Viacom, getting yelled at because I wasn’t aggressive enough,” Tomita said. “I wasn’t buying it in a manner that was moving the stock price as high as he wanted.”
Traders could often tell when Hwang was about to berate them, he said. “Sometimes he didn’t even need to vocalize because on the Zoom he would just glare, and that glance alone meant we were about to get yelled at or he was annoyed,” Tomita testified.
Bloomberg Businessweek
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