High provisions for settlements with investors.
(Photo: dpa)
Munich Alliaz has fired two fund managers behind its collapsed US structured alpha hedge funds. This emerges from regulatory documents and information from informed circles.
The investment professionals left the asset management subsidiary Allianz Global Investors about two months ago, it said. The affected funds ran into difficulties during the market turmoil at the beginning of the pandemic and were later wound up. After investor lawsuits, Allianz has already set aside 3.7 billion euros for the case.
Among the fired managers is Greg Tournant, US Treasury filings show. He has been listed in previous AGI marketing materials as Chief Investment Officer US Structured Products and Lead Portfolio Manager.
Tournant was officially “fired for violating company policies designed to ensure compliance with industry regulations and standards related to the preparation and delivery of customer communications,” the US documents said.
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Also since December, according to the documents, another fund manager involved in Structured Alpha, Stephen Bond-Nelson, has left AGI’s service. There is a note that he was “dismissed for violating the company’s compliance guidelines”. A third fund manager, Trevor Taylor, also left AGI in December, sources said.
A spokesman for AGI declined to comment when asked by Bloomberg. A message to Tournant via LinkedIn went unanswered, and Bloomberg could not reach him through any other means. Bond-Nelson and Taylor declined to comment.
Many comparisons already made
In the Structured Alpha case, Allianz is facing lawsuits from investors who are said to have suffered losses of six billion euros. In the majority of these cases, comparisons have now been made, as Allianz said on Friday. There are also several official investigations, including by the US Department of Justice.
Allianz appointed its life insurance manager Andreas Wimmer as the new head of asset management in October after the widening problems with Structured Alpha became known. He succeeded Jackie Hunt. Wimmer said in a Bloomberg interview in January that AGI’s bids had recently been scaled back.
More: Despite high provisions – After the hedge fund losses, much is still unclear at Allianz