In the epic merger of Archegos – WSJ



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Bill Hwang was in trouble.

On Thursday last week, the company managing the fortune of the former hedge fund trader held a conference call with executives from some of the world’s largest investment banks. The urgent topic: Growing losses at Mr. Hwang’s family office, Archegos Capital Management, due to a handful of large bets on large stocks.

Because the bets had been made in part with so-called total return swaps – investments made by banks on behalf of clients for a fee – they had obscured Mr. Hwang’s significant exposure to several companies.

Archegos shocked his lenders when he told them the size of his wallet and how little cash he had, people familiar with the call said, not least because they were all facing billions of dollars in losses potential themselves.

Now Wall Street is sifting through the aftermath of the biggest single-company merger since the financial crisis. Mr Hwang alone lost about $ 8 billion in 10 days, a person familiar with the matter said, in what traders and investors say was one of the fastest losses of a sum as large as ‘they have ever seen.

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