Taking on Wall Street’s Biggest Bears
In a decade-long dispute that inspired books, documentaries, and the Showtime drama “Billions,” we took on the most powerful hedge funds in a fight to save the “Berkshire Hathaway of the North” from a short-selling attack designed to bankrupt it.
“Michael’s groundbreaking defense of short-selling attacks has restored billions of dollars in market capitalization to his clients.”
Forbes
“Bowe became famous in financial circles for a . . . deposition of hedge fund king pin Steve Cohen, in which he grilled the then-SAC Capital CEO about insider trading.”
Institutional Investor
“A Wall Street Battle Royale”
Vanity Fair
In a dispute chronicled in multiple books, magazine stories, and documentaries, we took on the most powerful hedge funds in a decade-long fight to save Canadian insurer Fairfax Financial, the “Berkshire Hathaway of the North,” from a short-selling attack designed to bankrupt the company and secure billions in short-selling gains.
Using an “all of the above” approach, we used our organic investigative group to conduct a year-long in-depth investigation, used the evidence we uncovered to launch an unprecedented RICO and commercial disparagement suit against the funds and their co-conspirators, and used the suit and our media capabilities to publicly expose the conspiracy of lies threatening Fairfax. The suit not only stopped the attacks, but, according to market participants and the SEC’s former top economist, also quickly discredited the lies and restored billions in market cap within months.
In addition, the suit garnered the immediate attention of the DOJ, which quickly arrested the campaign’s main provocateur and sought our assistance in launching the largest insider trading investigation in history. That investigation ended in a string of high-profile prosecutions and convictions, including the largest insider trading conviction and penalty ever ($2 billion) against our lead defendant, which was also forced to shut down. After a 12-year pitched battle against dozens of powerful law firms, we secured a jury verdict establishing the wrongs done by this conspiracy and awarding millions of dollars in damages, in addition to millions more secured from settlements along the way.
The case has been featured in numerous books, including The New York Times bestseller “Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street,” many magazine and major news stories, a business school class at Harvard, and several documentaries, including Frontline’s “To Catch a Trader,” in which Michael Bowe’s cross-examination of SAC founder Steve Cohen was featured. The historic drama the case ignited also was the inspiration for the hit Showtime drama “Billions.”
Since filing this case, we have successfully defended dozens of other companies against a variety of similar public and private disinformation campaigns, and our model and precedent have been copied by many others.