How To Boook - Barry James Dyke Guaranteed Income

Private Equity Firms and Financial Darlings Go Out of Business

In my book, The Retirement Ruse, released in 2024, I documented the major collapses and scandals of alternative investment firms Woodford Investment Management in the U.K., the 2023 H2O Asset Management scandal in England and France, and the 2022 Sculptor Asset Capital Management scandal in the U.S.

Sculptor was particularly notable as it was one of the first private equity and hedge funds to go public on November 22, 2007 in a $1.15 billion IPO as Och-Ziff Capital Management NYSE: OZM. An extremely corrupt Pirate of Manhattan, Och-Ziff was involved in one of the greatest bribery scandals in African history. For doubting Thomases, who want proof that alternative asset firms can be unwise to here are summaries of some of them:

Abraaj Group

Founded in 2002 in Dubai by Pakistani deal maker Arif Naqvi, Abraaj Group was once a high-flying private equity firm that invested in private equity, private credit, impact investing, and real estate. At its peak, Abraaj Group was the largest private equity fund in the Middle East and North Africa, managing nearly $14 billion in assets.

High-profile investors who got snookered into investing billions into Abraaj Group included Bill & Melinda Gates, the World Bank, Bank of America, the United States Government, Kuwait Public Institution for Social Security, Air Arabia, Deutsche Bank, Texas Teachers’ Pension Fund, Louisiana Teachers’ Pension Fund, Washington State Pension, and Hawaii Employees’ Retirement System.

Another self-aggrandizing, private-equity robber baron, Naqvi, claimed to be “doing good” for his clients when they invested with Abraaj Group. Naqvi called it doing good with “partnership capital” and “business for peace.” Like other private equity billionaires, Naqvi coveted a lavish lifestyle. He had a private mansion west of London where he could entertain bankers, lawyers, and investors, and had other homes in France and St. Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean. He had a Gulfstream jet with the personalized tail number M-ABRJ. He also had a sailing yacht with the same tag and once compared himself to the mythical Sinbad.

A favorite and former headliner at the Michael Milken Institute Global Conference series in Beverly Hills, California, in 2017 Naqvi spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on health issues. Considered a private equity expert, Naqvi also spoke at the International Finance Corporation/Global Private Equity Conference and the PricewaterhouseCoopers Annual Global CEO Survey.

Unbeknownst to investors, which included mainly public pension funds, Abraaj Group was siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars from the firm’s healthcare fund for operating capital and other investments.

In June 2018, Abraaj Group, once a rising star of the Middle East investment world, ran out of cash. Abraaj Group, based in the Cayman Islands, filed for liquidation. Two months later, in August 2018, authorities in the United Arab Emirates issued arrest warrants for Naqvi and another Abraaj executive, Muhammad Rafique Lakhani, for writing a bounced check for $48 million.

In 2019, the Dubai Financial Services Authority barred Naqvi from performing any function in finance in Dubai, and fined him personally $135.5 million; the Dubai regulator fined Abraaj Group $315 million for deceiving investors.

In April 2019, the once larger-than-life, private-equity tycoon Naqvi was arrested at London Heathrow Airport. In March 2023, while under $20 million bail, Naqvi awaited extradition to the United States, where he could face up to 291 years in jail for fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and bribery. In 2026, Naqvi remained out of jail, on bail in the U.K. In absentia, he was sentenced to three years in prison in the United Arab Emirates. Naqvi lost his appeal to avoid extradition to the United States on March 8, 2023.

As is often the case, much of Abraaj Group’s core portfolio investments remain in private equity hands. In May 2019, U.S.-based TPG announced plans to take over Abraaj Group's Health fund with thirty hospitals, sixteen clinics, and eighty-two diagnostic centers.

Another private-equity horror show, an August 26, 2025, Bloomberg article by Simon Marks and Kendall Taggart, “Private Equity Firm Said to Prioritize Profit over Patients,” exposed another black eye for private equity. From the article, it appears that TPG is just interested in making money.

Archegos Capital-Credit Suisse, Nomura, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Deutsche Bank

In the collapse of Archegos Capital in March 2021, financier Bill Hwang, with the help of Credit Suisse, Nomura, Morgan Stanley, UBS, and others, lost more than $10 billion.

Artis Finance-TDR Capital, Jefferies

Based in London and controlled by TDR Capital, one of the U.K.'s most prominent private equity firms, Artis Finance was another private equity-backed financial company to go down in flames.

New York-based Jefferies Financial Group supported Artis with warehouse lending. Jefferies is the main Wall Street bank behind the collapse of First Brands.

Artis Finance, like Greensill Capital (which filed for bankruptcy in the U.K. and U.S. in 2021), specialized in lending against outstanding bills between companies. Artis filed for administration (bankruptcy) in the U.K. in the High Court of Justice, London, on March 3, 2025, case# CR-2025-001411 2025 with an estimated ~£250 million to £300 million in debt and liabilities. Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) had the largest exposure to Artis’s bonds. CDPQ owned $105 million of the $260 million outstanding bonds. Nuveen, owned by TIAA CREF, reportedly owned $70 million of the bonds, while Barings owned $30 million.

Candover Investments PLC

Candover Investments, founded in 1980, was once a darling of British finance and one of the U.K.’s leading private equity firms, with more than £6 billion ($7.62 billion) of assets under management. At its peak, Candover had offices in London, Paris, Madrid, and Milan.

Candover became entangled in a number of disastrous private-equity deals that included Ferretti, the Italian super-yacht builder, and the mega-merger of gambling operators Gala and Coral Eurobet. A public company, Candover ran into trouble after huge losses in the value of its portfolios in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis. After a 30 percent loss in a 2008 investment fund, Candover returned cash to investors and shut down in 2009.

To manage the shutdown of Candover and honor commitments of its prior fund, former Candover executives launched a new private equity firm, Arle Capital Partners. However, after recording a negative 13.4 percent internal rate on Candover’s 2005 $4.4 billion fund, Arle Partners shut down at the end of the first quarter of 2017. On April 19, 2018, Candover was placed into voluntary liquidation.

debt. Here are some of them.

Credit Suisse-UBS, Swiss Government

In the collapse of Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest bank, in March 2023, the losses were staggering.

Credit Suisse's collapse erased between $17 and $20 billion in shareholder value, plus an additional $17 billion in ATI Tier 1 bonds, also known CoCo bonds. Depositors withdrew $120 billion from the bank. Credit Suisse required $220 billion in guarantees from the Swiss central bank.

We will never know the exact losses as the Swiss government sealed records of the bailout for fifty years.

Collapses of Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic, Signature Bank, and Silvergate Bank

The collapses of Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic Bank, Signature Bank, and others occurred in 2023. The cost for Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in FDIC bailouts was $20 billion, for First Republic Bank it was $13 billion in FDIC bailouts, and Signature Bank, which specialized in cryptos, cost $2.4 billion in FDIC bailouts.

Silvergate Bank, which did a majority of its business with the collapsed cryptocurrency firm FTX/Alameda, was bailed out but no credible figures were released.

First Brands Group-Jefferies, BlackRock, UBS, Texas Treasury

The mysterious implosion of auto parts marketer First Brands has put a spotlight on Jefferies, UBS, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, Texas Treasury, Raistone Capital, Norinchukin Bank and Mitsui & Co., Pemberton Asset Management, CIT Group, and others.

The collapse of the mysterious First Brands was disturbing, as invoice financing was a main source of capital for the group. First Brands reminds one of the collapse of Enron and the collapse of Greensill Capital in 2021, as all three practiced massive off-balance sheet financing and special purpose entities (SPEs), all of which involved tremendous complexity. It also puts a spotlight on the dangers private credit and Wall Street's ongoing recklessness.

Onset Financial, a private asset-backed finance specialist based in Draper, Utah, appears to have taken the biggest hit in the First Brand's collapse, claiming that the auto parts company owed Onset roughly $1.9 billion, according to bankruptcy filings. The financing Onset Financial had provided to First Brand took the form of a sale-leaseback transaction. Some of the most prominent failures with Wall Street's beloved sale-leasebacks include

Although the dust had not settled by the end of 2025, somewhere around $11.6 billion of liabilities were revealed in the bankruptcy filing. As of this writing, there were more than $2.3 billion in "vanished" receivables: Jefferies/Point Bonita lost $715 million, UBS O'Connor $500 million, and Norinchukin-Mitsui $1.75 million. A conservative estimate of the losses ranged from $1.7 billion to $4.6 billion. Jefferies said that its own exposure was limited to about $45 million in Point Bonita. Most of the funds were from other investors such as institutional investors.

The company raised billions of dollars of debt secured by the inventory of auto parts sitting in warehouses with multiple lenders. First Brands also extensively used factoring, whereby companies sell outstanding customer invoices in return for upfront cash. According to the Financial Times, UBS O'Connor, based in Chicago, and Wall Street heavyweight Jefferies, through a hedge fund it owned, provided massive invoice financing for First Brands. UBS O'Connor, a private credit and commodities fund owned by Switzerland's largest bank, revealed that it had more than $500 million of exposure to the collapsed First Brands debt and invoice financing. In November 2025, UBS told its clients in the fund that had invested in First Brands that it would go into liquidation.

To complicate matters even further, UBS O'Connor had previously agreed to be acquired by Cantor Fitzgerald, the New York investment firm run by Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, sons of Howard Lutnick, who was the U.S. secretary of commerce under Trump in 2025.

Jefferies Financial Group (NYSE: JEF) has an even blacker eye than UBS. According to disclosures released on October 8, 2025, the New York investment bank had a long relationship with First Brands, providing invoice financing with two entities it owned: hedge fund Point Bonita Capital and Apex Credit Partners LLC, a private credit firm in which Jefferies had a 50 percent ownership stake.

Jefferies, the hard-charging investment bank, was led by the former Drexel Burnham Lambert banker Richard Handler. The New York bank is known for its annual Jefferies Consumer Conference in Nantucket, Massachusetts, a kind of Davos or Milken Conference event on the elite and exclusive New England island.

It was Jefferies who helped drive First Brands over the cliff, or into the drink. Although Jefferies did not take deposits and generally did not underwrite loans, it passed the risk outside the banking system using private credit through collateralized loan obligations (CLOs). Another of Wall Street's latest forms of financial sorcery, by packaging the risky loans into CLOs, through the alchemy of securitization, the loans were turned into bonds with pristine credit ratings. As part of the deal, Jefferies threw in the invoice financing and supply chain financing.

Point Bonita Capital, a hedge fund with roughly $3 billion in trade-finance assets, reported that it had a $715 million exposure to First Brands, providing receivable financing for Walmart, AutoZone, NAPA, O'Reilly Auto Parts, and Advanced Auto Parts. Jefferies has been providing financing for First Brands through private credit invoice financing since 2019. To compound matters, in October 2025, BlackRock and other investors, including the Texas Treasury Safekeeping Trust, had funds invested in Point Bonita Capital. According to Bloomberg, BlackRock requested to withdraw its funds from the hedge fund, but no figures of the amounts involved were given.

Separately, Apex Credit Partners, a private credit firm, owned roughly $48 million in First Brand term loans, according to Jefferies’ disclosures. Taken together, Jefferies had a minimum of $763 million exposure to First Brands through private credit, the latest fad investments from Wall Street. If this were not disgusting enough, other lenders who provided First Brands financing believe that Jefferies provided secret "side letter" financing agreements, which may have breached other loan covenants.

With only $14 million in cash and as much as $9.3 billion in debt backed by inventory, plus an additional $2.3 billion of debt from factoring, First Brands filed for bankruptcy in September 2025. The last bank accounts with $27 million in working capital were in the process of being seized by SouthState Bank based in Florida. Millenium Management, one of Wall Street's biggest names, lost another $100 million with the company's collapse.

Keystone Private Income Fund, managed by the Utah-based private credit firm Keystone National Group, also reported exposure to First Brands through its investment vehicles, Carnaby Inventory II and III.

Raistone Capital, another New York-based fintech company specializing in financing working capital, trade finance, and embedded finance or supply chain finance, which also worked with First Brands, announced that it would lay off dozens of employees, as First Brand had provided Raistone Capital with as much as 80 percent of its income. One of First Brand's largest creditors, Raistone claims that as much as $2.3 billion lent to First Brands had "simply vanished."

If that weren't enough, in the bankruptcy filing, a joint venture between Norinchukin Bank and Mitsui & Co., a Japanese trading house, reported an exposure of as much as $1.75 billion in losses in trading financing that it had provided First Brands. During the same week, Morgan Stanley requested that money it had invested in First Brands through Jefferies Financial Group's Point Bonita Capital be returned to the firm.

A canary in the coal mine, insurers Allianz, Coface, and AIG began preparing for a wave of claims for the collapsed First Brands. The insurers provided coverage to shield trading partners and investors from losses. In November 2025, First Brands lawyers said that the company needed roughly $600 million in remaining bankruptcy funding or First Brands would be shut down and go into liquidation.

Greensill Capital-SoftBank, General Atlantic, GIC Singapore, Credit Suisse, David Cameron

Greensill Capital, the London-based supply-chain finance company founded by former Morgan Stanley banker Lex Greensill, was the darling of British finance, considered a "disruptor" in invoice financing. It was financed with more than $1.7 billion from General Atlantic, SoftBank, Credit Suisse, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley.

A financial darling of the media, and British finance, former U.K. prime minister was a senior advisor to Greensill from 2018 to 2021 up to Greensill's collapse. Cameron did leave Greensill with an empty pail, as he was paid $1 million a year and was granted equity that could have been worth millions.

Greensill Capital (UK) Limited filed for administration ( bankruptcy) first in the United Kingdom on March 8, 2021 at the High Court of Justice, London, case #000435, and then in the U.S., a Chapter 15 Bankruptcy on August 18, 2021 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, case #21-11473 as a result of its horrific lending practices.

Greensill Capital Pty Ltd, the Australian division of Greensill and the ultimate parent of the Greensill Group filed voluntary administration (bankruptcy) on March 8, 2021 as well.

Greensill Bank AG, the German bank Greensill owned filed for insolvency in Germany on March 16, 2021.

The collapse of invoice of U.K.-based Greensill Capital caused more than $10 billion in losses with funds from Credit Suisse, UBS, SoftBank, General Atlantic, and others. A major business strategy of Greensill was invoice financing or factor financing, a significant contributor to the collapse of auto parts distributor First Brands in September 2025.

GPB Capital Holdings LLC

GPB Capital Holdings LLC was a New York-based private equity firm controlled by founders David Gentile, Jeffrey Schneider, and Jeffrey Lash. In an era of 0 percent interest rates created by the Federal Reserve to bail out the banking industry, but which crushed Main Street savers, GPB Capital projected 8 percent juicy returns by investing in auto dealerships and waste management companies.

Through a private placement offering, GPB Capital Holdings raised roughly $1.7 billion from seventeen thousand retail investors, many of them seniors. According to Houston-based law firm Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, more than sixty brokerage firms sold GPB private placement investments to retail investors. The collapse of GPB Capital Holdings in 2023 was the greatest failure of a private equity firm since Abraaj Group in 2018.

After raising money for its private equity fund, in 2017, GPB Capital Holdings acquired a majority interest in the Prime Motor Group, the New England-based auto dealership group that owned dealerships throughout the region. Prime Motor Group was created by the late Ira Rosenberg and his son, David. The Rosenbergs reportedly received $235 million for a majority interest in the company.

However, the projected return on investing in auto dealerships projected by GPB Capital was a deal too good to be true. In December 2018, the U.S. Justice Department claimed that GPB Capital had failed to pay 8 percent dividends to its investors. In reality, GPB Capital was operating like a Ponzi scheme, using new investor money to pay earlier investors, according to the Department of Justice. At the end of 2018, operations of GPB Capital effectively shut down.

By February 2021, GPB had failed to pay out the projected returns and was facing criminal charges and civil complaints from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York attorney general. In May 2021, regulatory filings revealed that GPB Auto, the entity that owned the dealerships, had $19.3 million of losses on revenues of $2.38 billion. A foreboding, dark cloud, GPB Auto stated that there was significant doubt that the Prime Auto business would be able to survive. GPB suspended investor redemptions and distributions, and stopped raising capital for the private equity fund. Anxious investors waited more than six years to get their funds out.

In 2023, Under a court-appointed monitor, Alvarez & Marshall, GPB sold two dozen auto dealerships in the Northeast, yielding $880 million. They also sold property at the Port of Newark, New Jersey, and a healthcare company that the private equity firm owned. Together they collected $980 million in assets, but were still short $720 million of the original money they had taken in.

In a June 2024 trial against the founders of GPB Capital, Jeffrey Lash, another founder who pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in 2023 and agreed to help prosecutors, revealed how the founders Gentile and Schneider had used funds from investors to acquire Ferraris, buy private jets, and pay themselves millions in dividends even when the dealerships were not making any money.

In August 2024, a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted two founders of GPB Capital Holdings, CEO David Gentile and Jeffry Schneider, the owner and CEO of Ascendant Capital. The federal jury found both men guilty of securities fraud and conspiracy charges regarding their handling of around $1.7 billion raised from roughly seventeen thousand individual investors. Gentile was also convicted of wire fraud.

In May 2025, Judge Rachel Kovner sentenced Gentile to seven years in prison, while Schneider received a six-year sentence. Lash was not incarcerated and entered a guilty plea in 2023, after cooperating with the prosecutors.

Having connections in high places saved Gentile. On November 30, 2025, U.S. President Trump used his clemency powers to commute the former CEO of GPB Capital’s seven-year prison sentence. Gentile was released after serving only twelve days.

H2O and Natixis Asset Management

In 2010 the giant Paris, France based asset manager Natixis Asset Management teamed up with London-based hedge fund H2O Asset Management to sell hedge fund shares to retail savers. Hedge funds are one of the private assets Wall Street wants to stuff into 401(k)s.

From the start, H2O had the backing of Natixis, but the French bank was a clown hat financial buffoon. Natixis was not only a big investor with Ponzi scheme operator Bernie Madoff, but Natixis also had one of the largest European exposures to U.S. subprime mortgages during the 2008 financial crisis. A horrible risk manager, the share price of Natixis the bank collapsed during 2008. A welfare queen, by 2009 Natixis was so badly wounded that the bank needed a €7 billion ($8.2 billion) bailout by the French taxpayer.

After being bailed out by French taxpayers, Natixis acquired a 50 percent stake in H2O in 2010. In a joint venture, Natixis aggressively marketed H2O’s unregulated alternative investment funds to retail savers. In the mania of the moment, H2O, with the marketing might of Natixis, became one of the bank’s most profitable divisions. Due to strong marketing by the bank, the hedge fund saw its assets balloon to $15.5 billion.

But behind the scenes, H2O has made some stupid bets on its own. H2O purchased more than $1.3 billion in junk bonds from the extremely controversial financier Lars Windhorst. Windhorst New Technologies, his investment entity that focused on technology, filed bankruptcy in 2003, while he filed his first bankruptcy personally in 2007. In January 2009, Vatas Holding, his German investment firm filed bankruptcy. In November 2021, Windhorst’s investment entity, Tennor Holding, which owned major stakes in German shipyards, was declared insolvent in a Dutch court. Tennor Holding, filed for bankruptcy in the Court of Amsterdam on June 17, 2025, at the request of Dutch authorities. Lars Windhorst Private Office Ltd., his U.K. branch, filed for insolvency in January 2025.

In the end, the joint venture by Natixis and H2O to sell complicated opaque hedge fund investments with investments from Lars Windhorst was not a success story. On June 18, 2019, the Financial Times reported on the controversial, thinly traded, illiquid securities in the Natixis/ H2O fund which had major investments with Windhorst.

There was a stampede to the exits, and more than $8.5 billion of funds were withdrawn from H2O.

While thousands of retail savers lost billions, other H2O funds were frozen. A day late and a dollar short, on January 4, 2023, AMF, the French financial regulator, fined H2O $105 million for investing in illiquid bonds with Windhorst, while more than six thousand investors filed suits against H2O for losses of more than $700 million. At the end of 2025, H2O remained in litigation for more than €717 million ($844.1 million) in losses.

Linqto

Linqto was a San Jose, California-based investment platform that allowed accredited investors a means to invest in startups and other private equity-type investments for as little as $5,000.

Founded by Bill and Vicki Sarris, Linqto used the familiar and popular Wall Street-Silicon Valley slang that it was “democratizing” the markets for private investments, letting smaller investors get into private markets like big institutional investors.

In an April 18, 2024, press release, Linqto claimed that it had more than $350 million in private investments in sixty countries and that it served over 750,000 savers, “democratizing” access to private market investments and giving retail savers instant ownership. Looking to attract additional investors into its funds, in 2023, Linqto lowered its minimum investment to $2,500. Investments that Linqto claimed to have for the little guy investor in its funds included the following:

Known Reported Investments by Linqto

Company

Investment Type

Ripple

Cryptocurrency

Anthropic

Artificial Intelligence

SpaceX

Aerospace

Stripe

Finance

CoreWeave

Artificial Intelligence

Databricks

Data Management

Yet behind closed doors, Linqto had big problems. The company was under investigation by the SEC and FINRA for potential securities regulations, compliance, and operational failures. Linqto, once a high-flying private stock investment platform, was not a private equity success story for small investors.

An internal investigation uncovered evidence that Linqto customers never owned the stocks and securities they thought they had. It was also alleged that Linqto was marketing these investments to those who might not have been eligible.

Another dumpster fire, on July 7, 2025, Linqto Inc., Linqto Texas LLC, Linqto Liquidshares LLC, and Liquidshares Manager LLC all filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas with debt and liabilities between $500 million and $1 billion (case #25-90186). In Linqto’s bankruptcy petition, it estimated the number of creditors (investors) having claims against the company between ten and twenty-five thousand.

Melvin Capital Management

Melvin Capital Management LP was a hedge fund started in 2014 by Gabriel Plotkin, a former trader of billionaire Steve Cohen's SAC Capital, a hedge and private equity fund in Connecticut now known as Point72 Asset Management.

Plotkin was a main character in the movie Dumb Money, the insane but true story of how Plotkin lost billions of other people's money betting against retail investors' ownership of Game Stop. In the movie, Seth Rogin plays Gabe Plotkin. Known for big wagers on technology and consumer stocks, Plotkin was managing $12.5 billion in January 2021, claiming stellar 30 percent per year investment returns.

A very wealthy and esteemed financier, in 2019 Plotkin and along with Rick Schnall, the co-president of the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, purchased a minority interest in the NBA basketball team the Charlotte Hornets from Michael Jordan.

In 2020, Plotkin bought $44 million of oceanfront real estate on North Bay Road in Miami. In 2021, it was reported that Plotkin to have earned $846 million, according to SEC filings.

Yet Plotkin was caught flat-footed in a short squeeze with the meme stock GameStop and lost $6.8 billion in several weeks. By April 2022, Melvin Capital's main fund was down 23 percent for that year, on top of the 39.3 percent in losses incurred in 2021.

In a letter to his investors in May 2022, Plotkin admitted defeat, shut Melvin Capital down, and said that he would return the remaining capital to investors. Plotkin did not go home with an empty pail. In 2022, various sources estimated Plotkin's net worth to be about $400 million. After losing billions of other people's money, he founded another private equity firm and family office, Tallwoods Capital LLC, based in Miami, which invests in public and private equity and real estate (www.tallwoodcap.com).

In August 2023, Schnall, a Wharton graduate with a Harvard MBA along with Plotkin and other investors purchased the controlling interest Charlotte Hornets from Michael Jordan which had a franchise value of $3.8 billion. A connected private equity pirate, Schnall is also a minority owner of the Atlanta Hawks, and is nephew of the Carl Icahn the corporate raider. Plotkin and has served as alternate governor on the NBA Board of Governors.

Schnall's Clayton, Dubilier & Rice has a number of very black eyes. Multi-Color Corporation filed bankruptcy in 2026, and its Cornerstone Building Brands products and its U.K. supermarket Wm. Morrison's are houses of debt. Sealed Air, the bubble wrap company is also troubling and discussed in greater detail shortly.

Novalpina Capital LLP, U.K.

Novalpina Capital was founded in 2017 by three partners—Stephen Peel, Stefan Kowski, and Bastian Lueken—who all previously worked at the U.S.-based private equity giant TPG. Based in London, Novalpina raised a €1 billion fund for private equity purchases. Investors in the Novalpina fund included Oregon Public Employees Retirement System, Yorkshire Pension Fund, and British Gas.

Novalpina Capital invested in NSO Group and its highly controversial Israeli cyber-technology company, Pegasus. A predatory software if there ever was one, Pegasus spyware was capable of penetrating iPhones and other smart phones without user consent. Pegasus could read encrypted messages on iMessage, WhatsApp, and Signal. The software can read emails, turn the microphone and camera on and off, and track locations. A controversial and evil entity, according to court filings in New York, Pegasus, the maker of the military-grade spyware, has been used to hack human rights activists, heads of state, and dissidents.

Other portfolio companies of Novalpina included Olympic Entertainment Group, a casino business in Estonia; Laboratoire X.O., a French pharmaceutical business; and MaxBet, a Romanian gaming business. A scandal ridden private equity firm, 99 percent of the funds investors voted to remove Novalpina as the General Partner of the fund, and ousted the founders in 2021. Novalpina imploded due to the Pegasus NSO scandal, internal infighting among the founders, poor investment performance, legal battles, and reputational exposure.

The collapse of Novalpina in 2021 also ensnared one of New York’s largest white-shoe law firms, Weil, Gotshal & Manges. Gerhard Schmidt, a co-managing partner of the Weil Gotshal German offices, was a key legal advisor to Novalpina Capital. On its website, Weil described Schmidt as “one of the leading private equity and M&A lawyers in Germany.” Not only was Schmidt a key advisor to Novalpina, but he also invested €5 million of his own money in the fund in 2017 at highly favorable terms.

NSO collapsed in 2023 and was taken over by its creditors. Another major problem for the Novalpina fund was MaxBet, in which Novalpina allegedly took an additional €125 million write-down on its investment in the gambling company in March 2025. Another portfolio company, French drug maker Laboratoire XO, was taken over by U.S.-based private equity firm Ares Management in May 2022.

With multiple problems in governance risk, founder infighting, reputational risks, and poor investment outcomes, the Novalpina fund was taken over by Berkeley Research Group (BRG)based in Emeryville, California. A major investor in BRG was the Portland, Oregon based private equity firm, Endeavor Capital.

In 2023, the Novalpina private equity fund went into voluntary liquidation. According to the Financial Times, Novalpina reported a negative 15.3 return since its inception.

On February 27, 2025, Berkeley Research Group was taken over in a secondary leveraged buyout for an undisclosed amount by TowerBrook a private equity firm based in New York which was once part of George Soros equity management firm, Soros Fund Management LLC.

Och-Ziff, Sculptor Asset Management—Rithm Capital

Och-Ziff Capital Management, a private equity and hedge fund firm, was founded in 1994 by Daniel Och with the backing of the Ziff family fortune. The Ziff family made billions when it sold its publishing empire, which included PC Magazine, PC Week, Computer Shopper, Car and Driver, and Popular Aviation, to private equity firm Forstmann Little in a leveraged buyout in 1994.

A Wall Street darling, Och-Ziff was one of the very first private equity and hedge fund firms to go public, raising $1.15 billion in an IPO in November 2007 (NYSE: OZM). At the time, the asset manager was valued at as much as $10 to $11 billion. As is frequently the case, Och-Ziff survived off public pension funds for teachers, firefighters, police, and other government employees. Here are some of Och-Ziff’s investors:

CalPERS the giant California pension fund had committed roughly $722 million into OZ Eureka and OZ Domestic Partners II as of 2023.
Florida Retirement System the state’s pension plans was an investor in Och-Ziff, according to an open letter to Dan Drake, State Retirement Director, from RAID, Florida.
Massachusetts PRIM (Pension Reserves Management Board) Though not publicly disclosed, according to research performed by RAID (Rights and Accountability in Development) on September 26, 2014, PRIM invested in Och-Ziff.
Missouri Department of Transportation and Highway Patrol Employees Retirement System was an investor in Och-Ziff, according to an open letter to Scott L. Simon, executive director, and research from RAID.
New Jersey Division of Investment the states pension fund, approved a large commitment to the Och-Ziff platform in 2015, according to Buyouts Insider. However, the actual amount of the commitment was not disclosed. An open letter was sent to Christopher McDonough, Division of Investments, Department of the Treasury by RAID about its investment in Och-Ziff.
Ohio Public Employees Retirement System was an investor in Och-Ziff, according to an open letter to Karen Carraher, executive director, by RAID.
Oregon State Treasury (Oregon PERS) committed $150 million to Sculptor Real Estate Fund IV (2020) and $110 million to Fund V (July 2023).
Rhode Island (ERSRI) invested in Och-Ziff hedge funds but later exited the fund in October 2016.
Texas County & District Retirement System, according to research from RAID, the Texas pension plan was an investor in Och-Ziff.
Transport for London Pension Fund (often called Tfl Pension) According to correspondence from RAID to Maria Antoniou, Chairman of the Tfl Pension Fund Trustees, in London dated September 26, 2014, the Tfl public pension was an investor in Och-Ziff.
Utah Retirement Systems, according to an open letter to Daniel D. Andersen, executive director, the Utah pension was an investor in Och-Ziff.

A corrupt criminal enterprise, in 2016, Och-Ziff paid more than $412 million in settlements due to its bribery practices with African nations. Och-Ziff admitted to its role in bribing officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Chad, Niger, and Guinea through its subsidiary, OZ Africa Management GP LLC.

In September 2019, to bury the dead and the asset manager’s rap sheet, Och-Ziff was rebranded Sculptor Capital Management, and the ticker stock listing symbol went to SCU from the former OZM.

In November 2023, Sculptor was merged with and sold to Rithm Capital Corp. NYSE: RITM in a deal valuing the company at $720 million, 90 percent below its 2007 valuation. Insiders, according to securities filings, owned only 0.46 percent of Rithm Capital. Another private equity firm with nonexistent accountability, major shareholders were passive mutual funds Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street, Geode Capital, Bank of America and others.

Petershill Partners—Goldman Sachs

Around 2007, when the financial crisis erupted, Goldman Sachs began building Petershill, a private equity company that acquired minority stakes in alternative asset managers, including private equity, hedge funds, and private credit. Not wanting to hold on to its own cooking, Goldman Sachs brought the alternative private equity manager public on the London Stock Exchange in September 2021 under the ticker symbol PHLL. A black eye for Goldman, in October 2025, the firm announced that it would shut down Petershill Partners, delist it, and return about $921 million to minority shareholders, effectively taking a publicly listed investment private again.

The Phoenix Fund—Puerto Rico

As is often the case, financiers love tax arbitrage, and Puerto Rico has become tax heaven for private equity. Puerto Rico offers a 0 percent capital gains tax on assets acquired after one becomes a Puerto Rican resident.

Puerto Rico also allows businesses, including fund management firms such as private equity, to pay just a 4 percent corporate income tax. There are no U.S. federal taxes and no Puerto Rican dividend taxes on distributions to Puerto Rican residents. There is no U.S. federal income tax on Puerto Rico-sourced income, yet you also have the same legal and financial system as in the mainland U.S. without offshore complications. Plus, as with mainland U.S. private equity firms, Puerto Rican private equity firms operate with little oversight. These tax benefits have made Puerto Rico a hotbed for private equity firms. Since 2019, the number of private equity firms has quadrupled to more than 130 firms on the island.

However, not all is well. Puerto Rico’s financial regulator, Acting Commissioner Monica Rodriquez, is looking to audit these firms, saying, “What we have seen thus far worries us.” In June 2025, the regulator shut down the private equity firm the Phoenix Fund, with $596 million in assets. The fund, which invests in energy, healthcare, real estate, and other assets, is facing $45 million in lawsuits, and three plaintiffs have already been awarded $29 million in settlements.

Stenn Technologies-Barclays, Citigroup, Centerbridge, Crayhill Capital, Natixis

Stenn Technologies was another trade-finance business, similar to Greensill, founded by entrepreneur Greg Karpovsky. The company was backed by Barclays, Citigroup, Centerbridge, Crayhill Capital Partners, and Natixis.

In 2023, Stenn Group, once feted by some of the biggest players on Wall Street, was valued to be worth almost $1 billion. While presenting itself as the largest privately owned invoice financing business in Europe, Stenn, which claimed to have superior lending technology, was in reality a scam. After HSBC Holdings discovered that some of Stenn's transactions had been fraudulent, Stenn Assets UK Limited and Stenn International Limited Technologies went into administration (bankruptcy) on December 4, 2024 in the High Court of Justice, London, Chancery Division, case#CR-2024-007333 with $1 billion in invoice financing outstanding, and more than ~£100 million ($130 million) shortfall to creditors.

Woodford Equity Income

The story of the Woodford Equity Income Fund, which I previously covered in my book The Retirement Ruse, should have at least a brief mention here. The mutual fund, based in the U.K., was rife with illiquid private equity investments that asset managers like BlackRock’s Larry Fink want to stuff inside your 401(k).

The Woodford Equity Income fund was run by Neil Woodford, a financial celebrity in the U.K., known as the English Warren Buffet. Stuffed with dozens of illiquid private companies, the mutual fund was stuck with a bunch of losers. But with great marketing from promoters such as Hargreaves Lansdown, one of the U.K.’s largest distributors of financial products, which specialized in do-it-yourself investors, the fund grew to more than £9.5 billion ($12.12 billion) in assets.

A disaster, in June 2019, the Woodford Equity Income collapsed, leaving more than three hundred thousand unsophisticated retail investors trapped as more than $5.48 billion was frozen in private equity funds. Net losses were more than £1 billion; however, no exact figures have been released. It took five years for the High Court in London to finally rule on the fund’s collapse and redress savers in March 2024. Hargreaves Lansdown, one of the U.K.’s largest retail investment platforms that was a huger seller of Woodford Equity investments, apparently had no qualms with private equity.

In March 2025, a consortium of private equity investors, which included CVC Capital, Nordic Capital, and Platinum Ivy (Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, took over Hargreaves Lansdown in a £5.4 billion ($6.9 billion) leveraged buyout at £11.40 ($15.50) a share.