It wasn’t me

The classic George Thorogood tune kept running through my head as the soundtrack to this NY Times article about the amazingly strange activity by a hedge fund manager named Scott R. Sacane. This guy somehow managed to acquire 33% of the stock in one small company and 78% of another and claims he totally missed it due to flaws in his software. Both the two companies’ shareholders and Sacane’s own fund investors are going to wind up screwed by this as he unloads the positions–one of the companies could potentially activate a poison pill that might help its other shareholders somewhat–but I can only imagine that this guy’s career and life are going to be shredded. Criminal charges, civil lawsuits, SEC bans, he’s going to get hit with the whole shebang. But Sacane can only point his finger at the software.