The Galleon hedge fund at the centre of an insider trading scandal paid hundreds of millions of dollars a year to its Wall Street banks and regularly received market information in return that would not have been disclosed to most investors, executives familiar with the matter say.
A person familiar with Galleon, whose founder and head, Raj Rajaratnam, was charged with insider trading this month, said it paid about $250m to its banks last year.
During the boom years of this decade, its payments – which included fees, trading commissions and borrowing charges – were higher, according to estimates made by executives who dealt with the fund.