GWG's Decade-Long Fraud Started Well Before Beneficient Joined In
(Aug 2023)
By Craig McCann and Regina Meng.
Three Wall Street Journal stories describe alleged diversion of assets at GWG/Beneficient in 2019 and later to entities controlled by its CEO.[1] The WSJ stories mention an SEC investigation into accounting practices at GWG/Beneficient focused on the treatment of intra-company transactions and the calculation of comical "goodwill" Beneficient put on its books as it combined with GWG. In addition to these post 2018 issues, GWG's use of demonstrably unreliable...
Beneficient's Trading is Bad Omen for GWG Bondholder Recoveries
(Jun 2023)
By Craig McCann and Regina Meng.
We have found so many red flags in GWG Holdings' public filings years before its bankruptcy filing in 2022 that no unconflicted broker would have recommended GWG's L Bonds and no fully informed investor would have bought them. Nonetheless, $1.3 billion face value of L Bonds remained outstanding at the time of the bankruptcy. These bonds were sold by third tier brokerage firms in pursuit of undisclosed commissions as high as 8%.
We will tell a more...
Blackstone Fiddles as BREIT Burns
(Apr 2023)
By Craig McCann and Regina Meng.
You can download a pdf of this article to print or email here.
Introduction
In December, we argued that Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust ("BREIT") smoothed and inflated its reported returns for years, leading to large investor inflows. [1] We predicted that a run on the bank had started because of Blackstone's prior conduct, leaving it with two very bad options. BREIT could honor redemption requests at posted NAVs and see its NAV cut in half as the NAV...
