Lawrence Simon, president of the Baruch College Fund, is in hot water due to his connection with Bernie Madoff.
Simon was sued on Tuesday by NY State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo because his firm, Ivy Asset Management, allegedly recommended clients to Madoff's company, ignoring the trouble occurring there.
According to the New York Daily News, "the suit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court charges that Ivy's two senior managers saw red flags about Madoff more than a decade before he confessed to the scheme that landed him in prison for 150 years."
Cuomo said that Simon and Howard Wohl, co-founder of Ivy, never released any information to their clients regarding Madoff's troubled company and while the two claim that they knew about Madoff's problems since 1997, they were never disclosed.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Simon plans to fight the charges brought up and that he allegedly told clients they suspected trouble with Madoff. "Sound advice was consistently ignored. Anyone who knows Larry Simon knows that he has served his clients faithfully and honestly," said Paul Shechtman, Simon's lawyer, in a statement in the Journal.
"We at Baruch College are not involved in this, it is against him as an individual," said Christina Latouf, Baruch's chief communications officer. "It is a Baruch matter, but we are keeping CUNY in the loop."
Simon ('65), a graduate of Baruch, became the president of the Fund on July 1, 2008 after Larry Zicklin, who held the post for two years. He was the co-founder and former president of Ivy and is now a vice chairman.
Ivy was sold to Bank of New York Mellon and Simon earned more than $100 million, the Daily News reported.
According to the press release regarding Simon taking over the Fund at Baruch, "As president of the BCF, Simon will guide the investment of more than $130 million in Fund assets while presiding over a governing board of 60 trustees and trustees emeriti. Funds distributed through the BCF currently represent more than 12% of the College's annual operating budget."
Latouf told The Ticker it is too early to comment further on the matter. President Stan Altman has yet to respond.
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3 comments
1. Why are you quoting the Daily News? Do your own research. Did anyone at the Ticker read the complaint? It is publicly available.
2. This is actually a more interesting story than the Ticker makes it seem. Simon and Ivy figured out Madoff was a fraud and got Ivy and Ivy's clients out of Madoff. However, they had introduced Madoff to several pension funds, and received a share of management fees from that introduction. That is the real meat of the story and the indictment.
3. How about taking a look at the 2009 Annual Report of the Baruch College fund -- http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/documents/Annual_Report09.pdf
4. How about the fact that Larry Simon was a keynote speaker at Baruch Ethics Week in 2007. Doesn't that ring with irony? Mr. Simon's speech, entitled "Integrity: A Paradigm for Today's World" http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/news/ethics_week_2007.htm