The $14 billion hedge fund founded and run by Corporation Trustee Steven Cohen P'08 is under renewed federal scrutiny after the recent arrest of a former company employee on charges of insider trading.
Technology analyst Jon Horvath, who was arrested last Wednesday, is the fourth former SAC Capital Advisors employee to be charged with insider trading in the past two years. SAC Capital, based in Stamford, Conn., has grown to be one of Wall Street's most influential and successful hedge funds since its founding in 1992, but the fund has been under federal investigations since 2007. Cohen has never been implicated in any misconduct.
The heightened focus on SAC Capital has been part of a greater federal push to tighten regulation and oversight of the hedge fund industry. Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission opened investigations into the fund's trading patterns in two separate instances.
The charges against Horvath focus specifically on insider trading tied to the $1 million profit the fund made from trading shares of Dell, Inc. in 2008.
"The firm is continuing to cooperate with the government investigation," an SAC spokesman told The Herald, but he declined to comment further.
Cohen has served on the Corporation, the University's highest governing body, since 2008. He was named among the world's 100 most influential people by Time in 2007 and among the 100 wealthiest people by Forbes in 2009.
Cohen has recently indicated a desire to bid for the ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers professional baseball team, and it is unclear how the mounting investigation of his fund may affect that bid.
