The Archegos Story Is a Disaster Foretold
Regulators should have seen this one coming.
Why did the banks back him?
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The implosion of Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management, the investment firm that was forced to liquidate more than $20 billion worth of stocks, prompted a sense of deja vu in a number of my Bloomberg Opinion colleagues. Several major banks face enormous losses after Hwang, an alumnus of Julian Robertson’s legendary Tiger Management, defaulted on margin calls. For Timothy L. O’Brien, the collapse brings to mind the 1998 saga of Long Term Capital Management, which was forced to liquidate after gorging on too much debt. Then, as now, a lack of transparency was a big part of the problem.