Matt Levine, Columnist

Why Are the Feds Protecting SAC Capital's Investors?

ApparentlyÂ SAC Capital Advisors haveÂ "reached out to prosecutors in New York to say that SAC founder Steven Cohen is interested in settling the civil and criminal cases against him and his company" for fines in the neighborhood of $1 billion.

September 24, 2013 at 4:25 PM UTC

By Matt Levine

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

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Apparently SAC Capital Advisors have "reached out to prosecutors in New York to say that SAC founder Steven Cohen is interested in settling the civil and criminal cases against him and his company" for fines in the neighborhood of $1 billion.

This makes sense, since $1 billion is (for Cohen!) rather less than "everything," but if you've been following this story closely you might remember that time (March!) when SAC reached a $600 million settlement with the SEC to put an end to its insider-trading-investigation troubles. That worked for four whole months. Then the SEC sued Cohen in July, and a week later the Justice Department brought a criminal case against SAC. One possible takeaway here is that SAC overestimates, or the investigators underestimate, the binding effect of settlements. I predict a billion-dollar settlement followed by new charges by Christmas. SAC investigations aren't ending until everyone now at the SEC retires.