The bad professor

Dynamic Decisions Capital Management founder Alberto Micalizzi’s behaviour “is amongst the most serious that the FSA has encountered” and he “has demonstrated a total lack of honesty and integrity” says the regulator. So why has he escaped criminal prosecution, asks Chris Hamblin?

Another hedge fund fraudster seems to have escaped from the due process of the English criminal law. The latest beneficiary of the Financial Services Authority’s leniency is Professor Alberto Micalizzi, the one-time CEO of Dynamic Decisions Capital Management who allegedly defrauded one investor of an eye-watering US$41.8million (£26.85 million) and did the same to others. The FSA has found him in breach of Statement of Principle 1 of APER, which relates to proper conduct for approved persons. He is alleged to have used a fake bond to disguise losses while touting for fresh investment. Micalizzi, although very recently fined £3 million – the highest amount that the FSA has tried to levy on an individual outside the market abuse arena – remains at large in his native Milan. Instead, the FSA, itself a prosecutorial body, has left the criminal side of Micalizzi’s case in the hands of Italian prosecutors.