Behind every billionaire there is a story!

EIM’s Busson Says Short Ban, Lehman Collapse Made Crisis Worse

 Arpad “Arki” Busson, chairman of hedge-fund firm EIM SA, said limits on short sales of stocks and a freeze of investment accounts at bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. exacerbated the global financial crisis.“We’re not in a credit crunch, we’re in a credit halt,” Busson said yesterday in an interview in London. “You take short sellers out and you take out 30 to 40 percent of the liquidity. It creates a vacuum. They are an essential liquidity provider.”

Busson, 45, founded Switzerland-based EIM in 1992 after helping raise capital for hedge-fund managers such as Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp. EIM has invested $14 billion for institutional clients in 175 hedge funds.

Hedge funds fell 4.7 percent in September, the $1.9 trillion industry’s worst month since the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management LP in 1998, according to data compiled by Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc. Some EIM funds lost as much as 5 percent last month, falling as much as 11 percent for the year, Busson said. That’s in line with Hedge Fund Research’s estimates for the industry.

read the rest published by Bloomberg here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aNklLVEVFejc