‘Big Short’ Author Lewis Sued, Accused of Defaming Wing Chau
‘Big Short’ Author Lewis Sued, Accused of Defaming Wing Chau
Jonathan Fickies
Author Michael Lewis.
Author Michael Lewis. Photographer: Jonathan Fickies
Author Michael Lewis was sued by Wing Chau, president and principal of Harding Advisory LLC, who accused the writer of defaming him in his 2010 book “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.”
Chau, a manager of collateralized debt obligations, according to a complaint filed Feb. 25 in Manhattan federal court, claims the book unfairly casts him as one of the “villains” responsible for the 2008 financial collapse.
The book “depicts Mr. Chau as someone who ignored his professional responsibilities, made misrepresentations to investors, charged money for work that was not performed, had no stake in the CDOs he managed, was incompetent or reckless in carrying out his responsibilities, and violated his fiduciary duties by putting the interests of ‘Wall Street bond trading desks’ above those of his investors,” according to the complaint.
Also named in the suit, which seeks unspecified damages, are the book’s publisher, W.W. Norton & Co., and Steven Eisman, managing director of FrontPoint Partners LLC, whom Chau describes in the complaint as “one of the principal sources Lewis relied on in writing ‘The Big Short.’”
The hardcover edition of the book spent six weeks atop The New York Times’s list of nonfiction bestsellers, according to the complaint. The lawsuit also states that Brad Pitt’s production company has purchased the movie rights and plans to release a film through Paramount Pictures.
Colorful Characters
“As a master storyteller, Lewis recognizes that colorful characters -- especially those depicted as heroes and villains - - make for compelling reading,” the complaint states. “‘The Big Short’ is structured accordingly.”
Among the alleged defamatory statements in the book is a reference to Chau as “a man who had made it possible for tens of thousands of actual human beings to be handed money they could never afford to repay.”
Lewis, a columnist for Bloomberg News, had no comment on the suit. His first book, Liar’s Poker,” was a best-seller about the trading culture at Salomon Brothers, where he had worked.
Norton spokeswoman Elizabeth Riley had no immediate comment.
Chau is described in the complaint as a native of Hong Kong whose family escaped Mao Zedong’s China in 1953 and settled in Rhode Island where his father opened a restaurant. He once worked at Salomon Brothers as an analyst, the suit states.
In 2006 Chau formed Harding, which is also a plaintiff in the suit. It has managed as much as $21 billion in assets, the complaint states.
The case is Chau v. Lewis, 11-cv-1333, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
To contact the reporters on this story: Bob Van Voris in New York at rvanvoris@bloomberg.net; Don Jeffrey in New York at djeffrey1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Pickering at jpickering@bloomberg.net
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