With good corporate and investment governance, recourse to the courts of law or arbitration becomes less likely, but we recognise that unexpected disputes do happen, and we specialise in helping sort them out by providing investment and hedge fund expert witness advice, reports and testimony.
Our experience with a wide range of roles in the investment fund and hedge fund industry places us in a unique position to analyse and offer opinion on a large range of issues.
Typically, specialist litigation support as an expert advisor is often necessary from an early stage in case architecture, right up to providing snap analysis of unfolding events in court. This can help ensure that the case and expert witness report are as closely aligned as possible.
Sometimes, we may have to limit the number of cases we take on in order to ensure that our service remains highly responsive. We provide services to plaintiff and defence teams. Some of the areas where we have expertise and experience are below. Except in rare cases, we are generally precluded from mentioning names or providing specific details.
Class action against Citigroup relating to the CSO hedge fund: We acted as expert witness in the class action certification of this case, acting for the plaintiffs, against Citigroup Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiary Citigroup Alternative Investments, LLC. The case was settled before certification.
Action relating to lack of due diligence on Madoff investment: We have experience of working on a number of cases, including acting for the independent directors of a hybrid hedge/private equity fund of funds where the portfolio manager invested with Madoff through a feeder, acting for investors when their fund of hedge funds invested with Madoff through more than one feeder, and acting for individual clients of private wealth managers who had invested in a Madoff-exposed fund of funds, or directly in Madoff feeders.
Litigation relating to other hedge fund fraud: Fraud rarely occurs without some failure on the part of other parties to fulfil their obligations. We have experience of assessing the roles played by service providers including administrators, valuation agents, investment managers, portfolio managers, as well as governance issues relating to the board of the fund.
Forensic accounting for quantum calculation in valuation of illiquid assets: In situations where there is no active market or official price for a hedge fund’s shares, valuation becomes difficult, and third party valuation estimates are susceptible to conflicts of interest and limited information. As investment analysts, we have experience of investigations using forensic accounting techniques to uncover enormous discrepancies between stated value and actual value. We provide independent assessments both of value and where third parties’ conflicts of interest may arise.
Family law disputes: We have acted as family law expert witness in valuation of complex assets in divorce. Very high net worth families may need independent experts to help trace and value assets pursuant to a Form E, especially where they are illiquid of the value of them is in dispute.
Criminal law: We have acted as expert witness in criminal law cases related to theft of intellectual property, involving assessment of forensic computer evidence, video reconstruction of alleged process, and opining where the process and feasibility of actions are in dispute, as well as the value of the property.
Various specialist expert witness hedge fund areas: hedge fund operations, due diligence, risk management, hedge fund directorships, NAV calculation and pricing, transfer agency, redemption, gating, side pockets, back office, outsourcing, trading, prime broker, leverage, liquidation, commodity trading advisors (CTA), managed futures, AIMA, best practice, foreign exchange (FX/forex), alternative dispute resolution (ADR), London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) and contracts for difference (CFD).