February 2009 Archives

Financier Allen Stanford, the man famous for promoting grassroots cricket in the West Indies, finds himself in the spotlight once again - but this time the attention isn't welcome. His Stanford Financial Group is facing a visit from regulators after doubts were raised over some of his best-selling financial products.

Here's an excerpt from a Business Week Report:

Financier R. Allen Stanford makes investors an enticing offer: He sells supposedly super-safe certificates of deposit with interest rates more than twice the market average. His firm says it generates the impressive returns by investing the CD money largely in corporate stocks, real estate, hedge funds, and precious metals.

But skeptical federal and state regulators are now taking a hard look at Stanford's operation—especially those CDs, whose underlying investments seem questionable. Over the past 12 months, the stock market and hedge funds have lost huge amounts of value even as Houston-based Stanford Financial Group continued to pay out above-average returns and claimed to have boosted the assets it oversees by 30%, to more than $50 billion.

BusinessWeek has learned that the Securities & Exchange Commission, the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a major private-sector oversight body, are all investigating Stanford Financial. The probes focus on the high-yield CDs and the investment strategy behind them. According to people close to the investigations, the three agencies are also looking at how Stanford Financial could afford to give employees large bonuses, luxury cars, and expensive vacations. Selling CDs typically is a low-margin business.

Stanford Financial vigorously defends its practices. "All three [agencies] have stated to us they were visiting our offices as part of routine examinations," says company spokesman Brian Bertsch. The firm, he adds, "follows industry standards for marketing and generating sales."

With post-madoff markets still jittery about the possibility of another big revelation it will be interesting to see how this one plays out.

More on offshore investment accounts

Every day it becomes increasingly more evident that investing offshore requires professional guidance.

European Union states won't be able to fend off tax evasion inquiries by hiding behind bank secrecy rules under a proposal to be adopted on Monday. The measure is part of wider EU efforts to snare people who exploit loopholes in rules to escape the taxman.