Archegos founder to go on trial for fraud, market manipulation
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Archegos founder Bill Hwang will go on trial for alleged securities fraud and market manipulation. The family-owned hedge fund run by Hwang had taken huge bets on a few stocks with borrowed money from banks. When several of those bets turned sour, the fund was unable to meet "margin calls" to cover the losses. The 2021 collapse of the fund caused $10 billion in losses for Credit Suisse, Nomura, Morgan Stanley, and other financial institutions. Hwang and Patrick Halligan, chief financial officer of Archegos, were both arrested by the FBI in April 2022. They both deny the charges, and their trial is due to get underway at 1300 GMT in a Manhattan Federal court. Hwang and other conspirators, including head trader William Tomita, sought to defraud investors by convincing them that shares in the fund's portfolio were on the rise when in fact the stock price increases "were the artificial product of Hwang's manipulative trading and deceptive conduct that caused others to trade." The fund used derivatives to take large stakes in top Chinese names such as Baidu Inc, Tencent Music Entertainment Group, and Vipshop Holding, plus US giants such as ViacomCBS and Discovery. The move to inflate share prices caused the firm to expand rapidly, increasing in value from approximately $1.5 billion with $10 billion in exposure in March 2020 to a value of more than $36 billion with $160 billion in exposure at its peak in March 2021.

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https://www.legit.ng/business-economy/economy/1592049-archegos-founder-trial-fraud-market-manipulation/