At noon, Jonathan Friedman, Pat Kingsley and others arrived in New York one after another, and everyone began to work together to discuss how to deal with the current situation.
Although Simon's operation of closely following the S&P 500 index curve for more than five months was a fantasy, there was no violation of regulations from beginning to end. James Raybould judged that it was precisely because Simon's transaction records were too clear and there were no loopholes to check that several major institutions used eavesdropping methods and disclosed the Westeros company's transaction information to the media. Forcing Simon to take the initiative to reveal his flaws.
In this era, the annual budget of the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is only $100 million.
A huge sum of US$1.6 billion, which is enough to put a person into the top 100 of Forbes' list of the world's richest people, is completely worth all the means used by several big companies.
For a young man like Simon who has almost no background, if it can be proven that there are irregularities in the Westeros company's transactions, the authorities will definitely issue a huge bill without hesitation, and Simon may end up losing his original principal. None will be left.
After Simon and Janet came to New York together at the end of October, they booked the presidential suite at the Plaza Hotel. It is difficult to determine when the bugs were installed. However, there are no illegal operations in the operation of Westeros Company, and it is naturally impossible for eavesdroppers to obtain the information they want.
At four o'clock in the afternoon, in order to avoid losing control of public opinion due to avoiding the media, Pat Kingsley, as the spokesperson, held a simple press conference on behalf of Simon to formally confirm a series of operations of Westeros Company in the stock index futures market. It also denied media rumors that Simon was under investigation for suspected insider trading.
A high-profile talented Hollywood director suddenly became a billionaire. With such explosive news, a simple press conference was naturally unlikely to satisfy the media's appetite.
Subsequently, the number of reporters gathered outside Simon's Upper East Side apartment not only did not decrease, but increased in number, and even once affected the traffic on Fifth Avenue. Countless interview invitations were also sent to Simon through various channels.
At the same time, the North American stock market also gave the most direct feedback today to the revelations from the New York Times and other media. In just one day, a brand new phrase spread rapidly among countless stock market investors: the Westeros Combination.
The stock market crash has passed. No matter how amazed and envious Simon Westeros's previous operations are, it is impossible for people to go back and imitate the operations a few months ago. However, this young man's transactions in the stock market are very easy to follow.
Although I don’t know why Simon Westeros bought a large number of technology stocks, for a young man who just made more than one billion US dollars in the stock index futures market, the other party’s buying operation is definitely more valuable than anyone else. Stock broker recommendations are 100 times higher.
The Wall Street Journal detailed a total of 26 technology stock portfolios purchased by Westeros Corporation.
Simon Westeros’ buy-in size is also very interesting based on the exposure data.
The 26 stocks range from Motorola, whose market value still exceeds US$5 billion after the stock market crash, to Silicon Graphics (SG), a high-performance graphics workstation production company with a market value of less than US$200 million that was just listed last year. There are also Apple, After Westeros made a series of large-scale purchases of a series of star technology stocks such as Intel, Microsoft, and SUN, its shareholding ratio in these companies has remained at a very subtle 4.9%.
According to the regulations of the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission, investors are required to report if they hold 5% of a company's stock, and subsequent buying and selling operations will also be subject to strict supervision.
4.9%, just below the SEC’s filing requirements.
Wall Street analysts also judged that Simon Westeros did not intend to hold these stocks for a long time. Since it is a short-term operation, there is no need to hesitate to follow up. As a result, in just one day, the trading volume of the 26 stocks held by Westeros Company increased several times compared to before.
After the afternoon close, the average increase of these stocks exceeded 20%, and some of them even returned to the highest point before the stock market crash.
Simon bought these stocks to buy at the lowest point of the week of the stock market crash. As the technology stock market was stimulated by the large purchases of Westeros companies, the value of these stocks had already risen by about 15% in the previous weeks.
Now.
After today's sharp rise, the book value of the technology stocks held by Westeros Company has reached nearly 1.5 billion U.S. dollars. In less than a month, Simon earned another 400 million U.S. dollars. All the cash and stocks of the Westeros Company have an overall asset value of more than 2 billion US dollars.
Simon's side.
After repeatedly confirming that Simon's trading operations, the questioning process, and the period of being wiretapped did not involve any inappropriate behavior that might trigger an investigation, everyone became busy dealing with the current media situation and discussing the possible investigations that would follow.
It was just as James Raybould expected.
Early the next morning, a spokesperson for the Federal Court of the Southern District of New York publicly stated at a press conference that day that the FBI, the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Office of the Prosecutor of the Southern District of New York were investigating Ray. Investigate the Mann Brothers' illegal operations that caused huge losses to Quantum Fund.
Taking questions from reporters, a spokesperson not-so-subtly confirmed that the DA's office suspects the Westerosi company may be involved.
Subsequently, a local New York TV station exposed clearer potential charges. An unnamed government official revealed that the prosecutor's office of the Southern District of New York suspected Westeros of conspiring with Lehman Brothers to manipulate the market. On October 22, On that day, insider manipulation caused the S&P 500 Index to plummet, causing huge losses to investors.
Simon never expected that he would be slapped with such a big label.
If the charges are proven, Simon will not only face a huge fine, but investors who suffered losses due to the sharp drop in the S&P 500 index on the morning of October 22 will have the right to file a lawsuit against him.
On October 22, the S&P 500 index plummeted from 256 points at the previous day's closing to 197 points. Just the 9,000 long contracts of Quantum Fund theoretically incurred an additional loss of more than 260 million US dollars.
The amount of investor losses in the entire Chicago futures market obviously far exceeded that of Quantum Fund.
At that time, faced with numerous investor claims, Simon could declare bankruptcy directly, and the huge debt after losing the lawsuit would be enough to prevent him from turning around in his life.
Simon did have information in his memory that the market plummeted due to the Lehman Brothers sell-off on October 22, so he arranged for the last batch of more than 5,000 short contracts to be sold on that day. However, this incident obviously had nothing to do with Simon and was entirely an internal mistake of Lehman Brothers.
Pat Kingsley immediately came forward to deny the accusation that Simon was involved in this incident. However, related arguments inevitably spread.
After Simon was questioned by the Federal Futures Trading Commission on Monday, the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission also questioned Simon on the following Friday. This time, it was the Rayboulds who accompanied Simon to meet with SEC staff and once again answered a series of questions. Regarding the stock trading of the Westeros companies.
Inside an apartment on 68th Street on the Upper East Side.
The time is already Monday, November 16th.
Last night, the first snow of this winter finally fell in New York. "When Harry Met Sally" is nearing completion, and the crew has been looking forward to snow in New York in order to shoot some scenes in the film, and the snow fell just right.
When he woke up in the morning and looked out the window at the vast white Central Park, Simon inexplicably thought of "A Dream of Red Mansions". After eight o'clock, Jonathan and others rushed from their residences.
The Federal Court of the Southern District of New York and other institutions have not officially launched an attack, but the previous week has not been easy for everyone.
In order to prevent Simon from being directly convicted by the raging media without even being formally charged, everyone has been busy with media public relations work recently, constantly clarifying and rebutting and even submitting legal letters to some newspapers. At the same time, they also contacted other media to publish various Press releases that benefit one's side to protect Simon's personal reputation.
Simon didn't care about reputation at all. But just like many things in life, you can not care about it, but you can't help but maintain it.
If he is forcibly labeled as a 'financial criminal' by the media like Michael Jackson, who was identified as a pedophile, Simon may be negatively buffed no matter what he does in the future.
Everyone was sitting in the living room where a large conference table was directly placed. They were analyzing yesterday's public opinion trends around a pile of newspapers, magazines, faxes and even videotapes. Jennifer Raybould, who was in charge of answering the phone, suddenly handed over the microphone. It was given to Simon, indicating that it was Noah Scott calling.
After the incident broke out last week, Simon did not take the initiative to contact Lehman Brothers at the suggestion of James Raybould, and there was also no communication with Simon there. At this time, when they heard Noah Scott calling, everyone had some strange looks on their faces.
Noah Scott claimed on the phone that he was nearby and wanted to come visit, and Simon agreed to come down.
A few minutes later.
Noah Scott rushed over, just greeted everyone briefly, and then whispered with a serious expression, hoping to talk to Simon alone. Under the gaze of everyone, Simon took Noah Scott to a living room next to him that was still empty.
The two of them stood by the living room window. Noah Scott raised his hand to wipe the condensation on the glass, looked at the snowflakes floating outside the window and Central Park in the distance, and said, "It's a very nice house."
Simon looked at the blurry glass window in front of him, but did not reach out to wipe it. He nodded: "Yeah, it's a pity that I haven't had time to decorate it yet."
Noah Scott paused for a moment. He didn't find another suitable topic for greetings, so he said directly: "Simon, I have to confess to you that the recent situation is very bad."
Simon turned his head and just waited for Noah Scott to continue.