Tremont Group Funds Invested $3.3 Billion With Madoff

Date: Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Author: Katherine Burton, Bloomberg.com

Tremont Group Holdings Inc., a hedge- fund firm owned by OppenheimerFunds Inc., had $3.3 billion invested with Bernard Madoff, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Tremont’s Rye Investment Management unit had $3.1 billion, virtually all of its assets, invested with Madoff, said the person, who declined to be identified because the information is private. Tremont had another $200 million invested through its fund of funds group, Tremont Capital Management.

“We believe Tremont exercised appropriate due diligence in connection with the Madoff investments,” the company said in a statement.

Tremont, which manages a total of $5.8 billion, is the second hedge fund company to report that more than half its assets were invested with Madoff, who was arrested Dec. 11 after he allegedly confessed to running a “giant Ponzi scheme” that may have bilked investors out of $50 billion. Fairfield Greenwich Group said on Friday it had placed $7.5 billion of its $14.1 billion in total assets with the Madoff.

A spokesman for Rye, New York-based Tremont declined to comment.

Tremont was an early investor with the 70-year-old Queens native, and started its first Madoff-only fund in 1997. That group managed several funds marketed under the Rye Select Broad Market brand.

OppenheimerFunds Inc. is a unit of MassMutual Financial Group.

To contact the reporter on this story: Katherine Burton in New York at kburton@bloomberg.net