Former head of Archegos fund found guilty of fraud

Bill Hwang was found guilty in New York on Wednesday of fraud and market manipulation, in a case that shook the financial markets in 2021, especially Credit Suisse. The jury in a Manhattan federal court upheld 10 of the 11 charges against the financier, according to several US media outlets. Theoretically, he faces up to 200 years in prison. Archegos' former CFO, Patrick Halligan, was found guilty on all three counts. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sunn Kook Hwang (real name) had, in the space of a few months, accumulated massive - and mostly concealed - positions in a number of companies. At its peak, in March 2021, Archegos was exposed to $160 billion (approx. CHF144 billion) through derivatives, thanks to which Hwang's company had multiplied its financial heft, but also the risks incurred. His aim was to drive up the share prices of the few companies in which Archegos had invested, to the point of almost quadrupling the valuation of ViacomCBS (now Paramount Global) in ...