PRESS RELEASE

Cisco Videoscape Enables German Broadcasters to Expand HDTV Services

ARD Installs Cisco State-of-the-Art HD Content Playout Systems at Two Premier Locations in Germany

AMSTERDAM, IBC, September 7, 2012 – The Association of Public Broadcasting Corporations of the Federal Republic of Germany (ARD), a non-profit, joint organization of Germany's regional public-service broadcasters, and one of the world's largest public broadcasters, is working with Cisco to extend its HD programming via satellite for HDTV viewers throughout Germany. Using the Cisco Videoscape^™ TV services delivery platform, including advanced Cisco^® video encoding and content processing technology, ARD has improved the overall video picture quality of  its German HD "direct-to-home" playout systems for satellite digital video broadcasting (DVB-S/S2).

Highlights

• Cisco is providing ARD with the necessary components to uplink video programming in HD format, helping it replace and upgrade technology and streamline operations by lowering costs at the ARD-Starpoint site in Frankfurt, Germany (being the central ARD Operator), and the WDR (West German Broadcasting) site in Langenberg near Cologne, Germany.
• Cisco hardware deployed for this project includes the D9036 multichannel/multiformat encoder, which encodes up to four HDTV programs at the same time, and the Digital Content Manager (DCM), which controls the bitrates and combines the TV services with service related auxiliary data.
• Part of the Cisco Videoscape Origination Suite, the D9036 Modular Encoding Platform is characterized by its scalability and superior video quality. Encoded video signals can be exported in premium quality via ASI streaming data format, or IP. Its wide range of IP functionality enables a smooth migration from ASI- into IP-based platforms and networks.
• The DCM can support full-quality delivery of multiple video signals. It is a key component of the Cisco Videoscape Acquisition Suite, due to its high video quality, flexibility, redundancy and network efficiency.
• Full system integration services and overall project responsibility was provided by Dimetis GmbH, a Cisco Authorized SP Video Partner, as well as the BOSS Broadcast Manager^®  control and monitoring system, which provides reliable and fully protected transmission of audio and video.
• The ARD-Starpoint facility processes the ARD Service, Das Erste, distributes the ARD-Bouquets via satellite, cable and IPTV, carries out the national and international TV and radio service exchange, and manages the common ARD core network platforms.
• The WDR is a constituent member of the ARD and the largest federal ARD broadcaster. In addition to contributing to the output of German national television channel Das Erste, WDR produces the regional television service WDR Fernsehen (formerly known as WDF and West3) and six regional radio networks. WDR also hosts the ARD-radio satellite transponder which delivers eight WDR radio services in addition to an event channel.

Supporting Quotes:

• Stephen Wagner, head of ARD-Starpoint

 "As we strive to provide HDTV viewers in Germany with superior video picture quality and greater reliability, we trust Cisco hardware to help us meet and exceed our goals. With Cisco's expertise, we were able to re-architect our network to more efficiently encode, decode and transmit HD signals to viewers' homes. With this technology in place, we can also execute on our plans to expand HD services throughout our markets, faster."

• Edwin Paalvast, senior vice president, Service Provider Group, Cisco EMEAR

"The Cisco Videoscape encoding and content management technology helps operators add and compact more channels of all types and formats into their network. Our work with ARD to enhance and expand their HD capabilities gives their viewers better quality HD video - with more HDTV choices soon to come."

Supporting Resources:

• About ARD
• About WDR
• About Cisco Videoscape http://www.cisco.com/go/videoscape
• Cisco Service Provider blog: SP360: http://blogs.cisco.com/sp
• Follow Cisco IBC news and activities on Twitter: #CiscoIBC and #Videoscape

Tags/Keywords

Cisco, ARD, ARD-Starpoints, Edwin Paalvast, DCM, Digital Content Manager, Digital Content Manager Origination Suite, HD, HDTV, Stephen Wagner, Videoscape, WRD

RSS Feed for Cisco: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/rss.html

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go tohttp://newsroom.cisco.com. Cisco equipment in Europe is supplied by Cisco Systems International BV, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cisco Systems, Inc.

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SAP IT Infrastructure Management Software Extends SAP Solution Manager to Enable 360-Degree View of IT Landscapes

Press release:

SAP IT Infrastructure Management Software Extends SAP Solution Manager to Enable 360-Degree View of IT Landscapes

SAP NEWSBYTE - August 29, 2012 | SAP -

SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the general availability of SAP IT Infrastructure Management software for end-to-end management, monitoring and coordination of IT infrastructures. The software integrates with the SAP Solution Manager 7.1 application management solution, which now offers customers running on SAP Enterprise Support services a consistent platform for the management of their entire IT landscape. Customers can now manage their whole IT — from enterprise applications and business processes to complex and heterogeneous infrastructures and network landscapes — with SAP Solution Manager.

High-performance IT enables companies to achieve business goals by helping to both uncover potential for optimization and cost reductions and to minimize risks and down time. To reap these benefits, companies need to systematically improve their IT infrastructures by continually capturing, documenting and analyzing corresponding data such as inventory, performance and availability data.

With SAP IT Infrastructure Management, SAP extends SAP Solution Manager with an independent infrastructure component. Customers can benefit from increased transparency into and deeper integration with core IT processes such as incident, problem and change management, as well as technical monitoring and alerting. Operations costs can also be reduced. SAP IT Infrastructure Management automatically identifies vendor-agnostic network components such as routers and servers, as well as uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and storage systems. This allows for comprehensive network management — even in heterogeneous networks. SAP IT Infrastructure Management enhances SAP Solution Manager to make it a complete solution for effective management of heterogeneous IT landscapes among SAP Enterprise Support customers.

SAP IT Infrastructure Management is built on the infrastructure management components of theGuard! product family from Realtech AG, an SAP global technology partner.

"In combination with SAP Solution Manager and SAP Enterprise Support, SAP IT Infrastructure Management allows for end-to-end monitoring of any type of IT components – from PCs, servers and printers to network and storage components," said Uwe Hommel, executive vice president, SAP Active Global Support. "Midsize customers using SAP Enterprise Support can particularly benefit from a proven and scalable solution that supports a wide range of devices and systems allowing a 360-degree view of IT. We provide our customers with a single source of truth for their whole IT."

For more information, visit the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

Multimedios Television Chooses Cisco PowerVu Solution & Videoscape TV

PRESS RELEASE

Multimedios Televisión Chooses Cisco PowerVu Solution and Videoscape TV Technology to Expand Channel Distribution

The television division of Grupo Multimedios is at the forefront of video distribution, improving efficiency, security and the quality of transmitted signals

Monterrey, Mexico, 21 March, 2012 — Multimedios Televisión has started satellite transmissions to national and international customers using the IP-centric Cisco® PowerVu® video processing and distribution technology, along with the Cisco Digital Content Manager (DCM), a key component of the Cisco Videoscape^™ TV service delivery platform.

The signal of Multimedios Televisión, Milenio Televisión, Teleritmo, Multimedios USA and Multimedios HD, transmitted to different paid television operators in Mexico and the United States, is based on MPEG4 DVB-S2 capabilities, which will allow a more efficient use of the satellite broadband. As a result, more channels can be distributed to customers.  In addition, services can be controlled for each paid television system and new services, like digital advertising, among others, can be offered.

The Cisco PowerVu architecture is based on the Internet Protocol (IP), which provides more efficiency in signal processing when converting and encapsulating IP Communications, and enables Multimedios Televisión to take advantage of proven redundancy and high-availability schemes. The distribution component is designed with a focus on security requirements and the administration of satellite ground terminals.

The PowerVu system has a codification system based on the next-generation Cisco Modular Encoding Platform D9036.

About PowerVu

• The multiplexing architecture system is based on the Cisco DCM Series D9900 Digital Content Manager, an integral piece of the Cisco Videoscape TV services delivery platform, which applies redundancy and processing schemes to the signals generated by the Cisco D9036 Modular Encoding Platform. The high capacity of the DCM will enable new functionalities in the audio and video systems. Furthermore, PowerVu has monitoring and control systems based on the ROSA EM and ROSA NMS platforms, which allow the implementation of redundant automatic schemes monitoring each of the elements of the platform and the service.

• The PowerVu control and conditional access system is designed so that only authorized customers can decrypt the signal and distribute it via their television system. The customer database and integrated receiver/decoders allow Multimedios to manage each one of them properly. 

• The satellite receptors, or integrated receiver/decoders, contemplated as part of the solution cover the needs of all the multiservice operators. The PowerVu Model D9858 Advanced Receiver Transcoder allows the transcoding of signals from MPEG4 to MPEG2 to facilitate the current cable systems, which are based on MPEG2. The flexibility of the D9858 allows the signals to be converted from HD into SD and from MPEG4 to MPEG2.

Supporting Quotes

"The solution supplied by Cisco allows us to use the maximum broadband in the satellite and to have eight signals, two of them in HD, where we had only four SD signals before," said Guillermo Franco, general director, Multimedios Televisión.

"Multimedios subscribers will have multiple benefits, such as three levels of sophisticated internal security based on a series of hierarchical encryption designed to withstand failure or a security breach. The PowerVu conditional access system is a proven platform for more than 20 years, and is implemented currently in more than 175 countries," said Rogelio Velasco, general director, Cisco Mexico.

ACI Worldwide Named a Leader in IDC Marketscape: Financial Crimes Management 2012 Vendor Assessment

ACI Worldwide Named a Leader in IDC MarketScape: Financial Crimes Management 2012 Vendor Assessment

Proactive Risk Manager™ Recognized for Real-Time Pattern Recognition Abilities, Customizable Alerts, and Reporting Options

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

(New York, N.Y. - March 21, 2012) - ACI Worldwide (Nasdaq: ACIW), a leading international provider of payment systems, today announced it has been ranked in the “Leader” category for financial crimes management by leading industry analyst firm IDC Financial Insights in the recent IDC MarketScape report, Financial Crimes Management 2012 Vendor Assessment.

ACI’s ranking is based on its flagship fraud detection product, Proactive Risk Manager. IDC Financial Insights stated, “Proactive Risk Manager's greatest strength is its integration with ACI's other payment products, particularly its BASE24-eps card processing system and its MTS wire and ACH systems. This integration enables Proactive Risk Manager to operate almost entirely in real time. Real-time alerting and decisioning continues to be a primary selling point, reflecting the product's roots in the card market.”

Shesh Gorur, vice president & product line manager, ACI Worldwide, said, “We are delighted to be recognized as a Leader by IDC in this report. Our goal is to provide a product that is both flexible and powerful, supporting our customers’ current needs while allowing them to react to the evolving world of payments fraud.”

As defined by the report, financial crime management includes the IT solutions that anticipate, detect, analyze, and prevent fraudulent transactions, money laundering, and employee financial misconduct through the use of one or more of the following: decision trees, neural networks, predictive scoring models, network link analysis, scenario matching, data mining, case management, and entity and device profiling.

Proactive Risk Manager is a comprehensive enterprise fraud detection solution to help card issuers, merchants, acquirers and financial institutions combat financial crime. By monitoring account activity across all lines of business, Proactive Risk Manager enables users to see more fraudulent activity in a shorter amount of time, minimizing losses and helping to preserve the customer relationship. Proactive Risk Manager combines the power of predictive analytics and expertly defined rules for fast, accurate and flexible response to the evolving and growing nature of fraud and money laundering.

For more information on Proactive Risk Manager please visitwww.aciworldwide.com/proactiveriskmanager.

News Release from Compuware - New eBook

Compuware Launches New eBook: Java Enterprise Performance

DETROIT, March 13, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Compuware Corporation (Nasdaq:CPWR), the technology performance company, today announced the availability of Java Enterprise Performance, a new online eBook authored by technology experts at the Compuware dynaTrace^® Center of Excellence. Java Enterprise Performance is a free resource for IT senior managers, team leaders and practitioners responsible for the performance of business-critical applications. To start reading, visit: http://book.dynatrace.com.

The online book is a comprehensive compilation of state-of-the-art approaches, best practices and pragmatic solutions to support application performance management and optimization initiatives throughout the lifecycle of systems from pre-production to production, encompassing all stakeholders: architecture, development, test, deployment and production teams.

"As businesses rely more than ever on applications, application performance management (APM) has become a top operational priority; performance delays of just two seconds can cause a revenue loss of 4 percent," said Alois Reitbauer, co-author and dynaTrace Technology Strategist. "As interest in application performance grows, more people want to further their careers in this field. Our eBook provides a pragmatic reference for those who are passionate about application performance and accountable for improving it."

All key topics covered in Java Enterprise Performance — from application performance concepts and memory management to hot issues such as cloud, virtualization and more — will empower architects, developers, test and operations teams to understand, measure and optimize the performance of Java-based technologies and meet the challenges they currently face in complex enterprise environments. The eBook is being published online with new chapters added monthly. 

The first two chapters are available today:

·         Chapter One —Application Performance Concepts: considers how to become performance experts. Besides technical expertise, IT leaders need a solid understanding of how performance and scalability works. The chapter reviews how to collect and interpret data properly and which performance data is needed in a variety of use cases.
 

·         Chapter Two —Memory Management: addresses the fact that memory management is often a major contributor to application performance problems. It highlights the inner workings of memory management and garbage collection to help understand memory-related performance problems such as memory leaks or excessive garbage collection, where they come from and how to optimize applications accordingly.

·          

The authors, all members of the dynaTrace APM Center of Excellence, include: Alois Reitbauer, Andreas Grabner, and Michael Kopp. They regularly share insight and expertise with a community of over 100,000 performance professionals at about:performance (http://blog.dynatrace.com). This online book contains more than 30 years of their combined knowledge in the application performance field. The authors have worked building large-scale applications and performance tools, developed numerous training courses and are regular speakers at leading software conferences worldwide on performance-related topics.

News Release from JPMorgan - Strategic Partnership

March 8, 2012

JPMorgan Chase and AirPlus International Form Strategic Partnership
New Partnership Will Provide Corporations and Their Employees With Integrated Expense Management Solutions That Deliver Local Expertise With Worldwide Reach

NEW YORK - March 8, 2012 - JPMorgan Chase & Co. Global Commercial Card business (NYSE: JPM) and AirPlus International, a leading provider of corporate travel & entertainment expense solutions, today announced the formation of a strategic partnership to help multinational organizations optimize processes and strengthen control of their corporate card and travel expense management programs. The comprehensive offering will provide leading solutions to both business travellers on the road and their travel managers at home.

By integrating AirPlus' innovative approach and expertise in corporate travel payment with J.P. Morgan's strength in global corporate banking services, the partnership will bring powerful benefits to organizations around the world.  This arrangement will generate new and innovative solutions in the corporate travel payments industry.

"AirPlus has developed a leading edge solution in helping corporations better manage their global travel spend," said Andrew Pilkington, President, Global Commercial Card, J.P. Morgan. "Together, we are delivering a compelling alternative to traditional corporate card programs. We will offer clients a complete suite of travel & entertainment payment solutions that provide world-class technology, travel expense management expertise and local service and knowledge. This partnership fully supports our strategy of delivering innovative yet practical solutions to drive a first-class client experience on a global scale."

"J.P. Morgan's strength and depth of experience in the cards business is an excellent fit with our know-how in international corporate payment solutions, and we are delighted to form this strategic partnership," said Patrick Diemer, Chairman of the Executive Board, AirPlus. "The partnership will form the basis for continued and sustainable growth of our global market share and bring us ever closer to our goals of becoming the preferred global provider of business travel payment solutions."

The features and benefits that the new J.P. Morgan and AirPlus partnership will bring to market will be announced in the coming months.

News Release from Cisco - Unified Computing System

Note to visitors: the Palo-Negro-Blog is no longer being actively maintained.  For more current posts, please visit:  http://JBK-BizTech.blogspot.com
PRESS RELEASE

New Cisco Unified Computing System Innovations Help Customers Build Clouds, Deploy Business Applications Faster

Additions to Cisco Unified Computing System portfolio quadruple memory capacity, double switching capacity and simplify management for large-scale UCS deployments

Related Information

Cisco Unified Computing System customer adoption and data center transformation infographic

Cisco Unified Computing System

Data Sheet

Cisco Unified Computing System Fact Sheet

SAN JOSE, Calif. – March 8, 2012 – IT organizations today are striving to establish data centers that support virtualization and cloud computing to become more competitive and agile, reduce the cost of physical infrastructure, and support the demands of data growth andBig Data analytics.  Cisco today announced innovations across the Cisco Unified Computing System™ to deliver a third-generation fabric computing platform– which integrates network, compute, virtualization and management– to address these challenges and help customers respond rapidly to changing business needs, scale their data centers, and accelerate transition to virtualization andcloud computing.

The Cisco UCS™ third-generation fabric computing platform incorporates the new Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 product family and includes multiple server form factors delivering the industry's highest server density and efficiency, with up to eight times the memory capacity and four times the I/O compared to previous UCS servers. The Cisco UCS Manager now allows IT administrators to manage both blade and rack servers as a common entity, and extends the management domain to span thousands of servers across data centers around the world.

UCS customers report dramatic operational and cost improvements up to: 30 percent lower infrastructure expenses, 90 percent reduction in deployment times, 40 percent improvements in application performance, and 60 percent reductions in power/cooling costs.

News Highlights

Unified Management with Cisco UCS

• Through enhanced integration with Cisco Unified Fabrictechnology, Cisco UCS Manager now unifies management for both blade and rack servers within a single domain. This industry-first capability reduces the cost of server connectivity, provides resource flexibility, and allows IT administrators to add data center capacity without additional complexity.
• In the second half of 2012, Cisco will introduce technology to support large-scale UCS deployments through centralized management for multiple UCS domains, spanning thousands of servers either in a single data center or spread across data centers around the world, providing industry-leading automation and orchestration for cloud environments.

Cisco UCS Integrated Networking and Virtualization

• The chassis I/O module 2204XP provides options for 80Gbps and 160Gbps down to each chassis to handle workload bursts. The module also offers port channeling, which allows load balancing across all ports to improve efficiency and resiliency through higher link utilization and bandwidth.
• The Cisco UCS 6296UP Fabric Interconnect doubles the switching capacity of the UCS fabric (from 960Gbps to 1.92Tbps) and reduces end-to-end latency by 40 percent to deliver industry-leading application performance. The fabric interconnect provides infrastructure agility at scale with unified ports and greater energy efficiency, lowering watts per port by 36 percent.  
• The Cisco UCS 6200 Series combined with the Cisco Nexus® Fabric Extender extends Cisco UCS Manager benefits to larger scale UCS deployments for both blade and rack form factors.

New M3 Generation Unified Computing System Servers 
Cisco broadens the Cisco Unified Computing System portfolio with one blade and two rack-mount servers based on the latest Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600. Available in March, Cisco's new server lineup improves workload delivery with enhanced performance, flexibility, and efficiency to support increasing data center demands. With more cores, cache, memory capacity, and internal storage and faster communication pathways to move data more quickly, Cisco UCS with the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 offers the industry's best performance, power efficiency, features, and cost.

• Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Server:  The enterprise-class Cisco UCS B200 M3 server provides performance, versatility, and density in a half-blade form factor, delivering balanced, industry-leading density through its 24 DIMM slots and up to 80 gigabits of I/O bandwidth. Greater density, performance and bandwidth mean business applications can run faster, more cost-effectively, and more efficiently.    
• UCS C220 M3 Rack Server: The Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack Server is a one-rack-unit (1RU) server designed for performance and density for a wide range of business workloads, from Web services to distributed databases.
• UCS C240 M3 Rack Server: The Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server is a two-rack-unit (2RU) server designed for both performance and expandability over a wide range of storage-intensive infrastructure workloads, from big data to collaboration.

Application Performance Leadership

• Since Cisco UCS was introduced in 2009, it has captured 63 industry benchmark world records. With industry-leading application performance and a rapid, automated configuration model that speeds the deployment of applications, UCS makes performance predictable and increases business productivity. Cisco UCS is the ideal platform to support databases, Big Data, virtualization software, Java applications, HPC applications, and Web services. 

Cisco Unified Computing System Industry Adoption

• Since it was introduced in, 2009, nearly 11,000 customers worldwide have deployed Cisco UCS to unify their data centers. Cisco UCS provides far greater benefits than simple convergence by unifying the compute, networking, virtualization, storage access, and management software as an integrated system to provide superior data center design flexibility and remove management barriers between blade and rack servers across bare metal, virtualized, and private/public cloud environments. Unifying data centers in this way allows customers to deploy business applications more rapidly, enhance revenue streams, introduce new business models, and grow their businesses while reducing IT costs.
• With approximately $5.8 billion in annual R&D spending, Cisco continues to innovate, driving data center transformation and helping businesses establish cloud computing environments more rapidly and cost-effectively. Cisco® Cloud Enablement Services, a comprehensive range of cloud professional and technical services, together with the Cisco CloudVerse architecture (which includes Unified Data Center technologies like UCS, intelligent networking, and applications working together), help customers build private, public or hybrid clouds; More than 70 percent of the top 50 public cloud providers deploy UCS.
• Cisco also collaborates with industry leaders like BMC Software, CA, Citrix, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems,Microsoft, NetApp, Oracle, Red Hat, SAP, VCE, and VMware, on developing data center solutions that ease deployment and management of data center infrastructure and take the risk out of solution planning and speed deployment.

Supportive Quotes

Indu Kodukula, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, SunGard Availability Services

"The conversation around cloud today has changed from 'if' to 'how', and IT organizations are trying to figure out how to use the cloud for running tier-1 production applications," said Indu Kodukula, Executive Vice President Products and Chief Technology Officer at SunGard Availability Services. "An enterprise-grade cloud service such as SunGard's, built and delivered on pre-integrated, premium infrastructure such as Cisco UCS and VBlock from VCE, is critical to making cloud ready for production. The pre-integration of compute and networking in VBlock, combined with open standards and customizable service profiles, enables virtual data centers to be spun up on short notice and provides a level of business agility without sacrificing application availability."

Robert Taylor, director of IT, Hendrick Automotive

"As the second-largest privately owned dealership group in the United States, we experienced server and desktop sprawl that required a more manageable, cost-effective unified data center approach, and we chose shared infrastructure FlexPod, with unique integration management of UCS and NetApp unified storage, as the best solution for our private cloud infrastructure," said Robert Taylor, director of IT, Hendrick Automotive. It used to take weeks to deploy a new business application, but now we can do it in a day.  Now senior management views IT as a business enabler that significantly increases our business agility."

Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst ZK Research

"Companies are not using the same networking gear they were a few years ago, so why should they use the same servers," said Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst  at ZK Research. Customers are not averse to change if the benefits are high enough.  Cisco built UCS with virtual and cloud computing in mind and now its competitors are trying to catch up. And Cisco has an especially strong offering now with its latest advances in fabric computing and enhancements to UCS Manager."

Soni Jiandani, senior vice president, Data Center Group, Cisco

"Our customers care most about time-to-deploy business applications, application performance and unified management of bare metal, virtualized and private/public cloud environments," said Soni Jiandani, senior vice president, Data Center Group, Cisco. "Cisco pioneered fabric computing and service profiles – still not duplicated by any other vendor- which allow IT managers to deploy applications in minutes instead of days. Now with innovations in UCS Manager their integrated management spans rack and blade servers, and scales across data centers to thousands of servers globally.  Our open system allows for structured integration with partner and customer solutions, making the Cisco UCS and the Unified Data Center a strong foundation  for rapid deployment, performance, scalability, and ease of management."

Supportive Resources:

• Learn more about Cisco Unified Computing
• Read more: Cisco UCS Industry Benchmarks and Application Performance Records
• View Cisco UCS industry awards
• View UCS customer success videos and case studies

• Read Cisco Data Center blog
• Cisco Data Center Social Media
• Cisco Data Center Services website
• Follow Cisco on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate.  Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go tohttp://newsroom.cisco.com.

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TX Teacher Pension Buys Stake in Hedge Fund

Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Texas Teacher Pension Buys Stake in Bridgewater Hedge Fund

By AZAM AHMED

The Teacher Retirement System of Texas just went from hedge fund investor to hedge fund owner.

Last month, the Texas pension took a $250 million stake in Bridgewater Associates, the giant money manager. Now, rather than plowing money into specific portfolios, it can claim a piece of the whole operation.

It is an unusual move for a pension. By investing directly in Bridgewater, the Teacher Retirement System of Texas can share in the upside return without paying the high costs. But the large state pension is also betting on the long-term viability of a firm whose fortunes are associated with a single enigmatic founder, Ray Dalio.

"They are essentially making a double bet in this particular firm," said Elizabeth B. Nesvold, managing partner at Silver Lane, an investment banking adviser that specializes in asset managers. "When you think about the downside, you get a double whammy."

Unlike many businesses, hedge funds are often closely linked to one person who has driven their success. SAC Capital has Steven A. Cohen; Pershing Square Capital Management, William A. Ackman.

But as the largest hedge funds mature, many founders want to sell stakes in the businesses they have built. In the last year, firms like Millennium Management, started by Israel Englander, and the Rock Creek Group have sought outside investors.

In addition to handsome paydays, hedge funds want to diversify their ownership base, in part to fund a more stable supply of capital.

News Release from the FBI, Charlotte Division

Four Hedge Fund Managers Indicted in $40 Million Ponzi Scheme 
Defendants Join Seven Others and CommunityONE Bank Charged in Connection with the Scheme

U.S. Attorney’s OfficeFebruary 23, 2012

Western District of North Carolina(704) 344-6222

CHARLOTTE, NC—A federal grand jury sitting in Charlotte returned an indictment against Jonathan D. Davey, 47, of Newark, Ohio, Jeffrey M. Toft, 49, of Oviedo, Fla., Chad A. Sloat, 33, of Kansas City, Mo., and Michael J. Murphy, 51, of Deep Haven, Minn., on February 22, 2012, on four criminal charges relating to an investment fraud conspiracy, announced Anne M. Tompkins, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina.

Joining U.S. Attorney Tompkins in making today’s announcement are Chris Briese, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Charlotte Division, and Jeannine A. Hammett, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CI).

According to the criminal indictment, the defendants operated “hedge funds” as part of a conspiracy that took in $40 million from victims for a Ponzi scheme operating under the name Black Diamond Capital Solutions (Black Diamond). The indictment alleges that the conspiracy lasted from about October 2007 through about April 2010. The indictment alleges that the defendants lied to get money from their victims by claiming, among other things, that they had done due diligence on Black Diamond and were operating legitimate hedge funds with significant safeguards, when in reality, neither claim was true. The indictment also alleges that, as Black Diamond began collapsing, the defendants and others created a new Ponzi scheme and with a separate Ponzi account that Davey administered. Thereafter, new victim money was deposited into the Ponzi account and used to make Ponzi payments to other victims and to fund the defendants’ lifestyles.

The indictment also charges Davey with tax evasion for claiming to the IRS on his 2008 tax return that $810,000 that Davey stole from victims was a “loan.” In reality, the indictment charges, Davey stole that $810,000, plus approximately $500,000 in 2009, from victims to build Davey’s personal mansion. Davey attempted to evade the taxes due and owing in 2008 by calling the money a “loan” from his investors to “Sovereign Grace, Inc.,” a Belizian corporation that Davey created as a diversion for his victims and the IRS.

The first charge against all four defendants, alleging conspiracy to commit securities fraud, carries a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000. The second charge against all four defendants, alleging conspiracy to commit wire fraud, carries a maximum sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000. The third charge against all four defendants, alleging a money laundering conspiracy, carries a maximum sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment and a fine of $250,000 or twice the amount of criminally derived proceeds. The final charge against Davey only, alleging tax evasion, carries a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000.

The defendants will be making their initial appearances in U.S. District Court in the coming weeks.

This indictment follows a series of convictions and other charges in this matter. On December 16, 2010, Keith Simmons was convicted following a jury trial of securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Simmons is in custody awaiting sentencing.

On April 27, 2011, a criminal bill of information and a Deferred Prosecution Agreement were filed against CommunityONE Bank, N.A., for its failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. As alleged in that bill of information, Simmons was a customer of CommunityONE, and used various accounts with the Bank in furtherance of the Ponzi scheme. However, as alleged in that bill of information, the Bank did not file any suspicious activity reports on Simmons, despite the hundreds of suspicious transactions that took place in his accounts.

Other defendants convicted in this case are set forth below. It should be noted that those defendants already sentenced had their sentences reduced by the Court to reflect their cooperation with the United States in its investigation and prosecution of others.

• Bryan Keith Coats, 51, of Clayton, N.C., pled guilty on October 24, 2011, to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and money laundering conspiracy. Coats is awaiting sentencing.
• Deanna Ray Salazar, 54, of Yucca Valley, Calif., pled guilty on December 7, 2010, to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and tax evasion. Salazar is awaiting sentencing.
• Jeffrey M. Muyres, 36, of Matthews, N.C., pled guilty on May 17, 2011, to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and money laundering conspiracy. Muyres was sentenced to 23 months’ imprisonment by Chief Judge Robert Conrad, Jr., on January 18, 2012.
• Roy E. Scarboro, 47, of Archdale, N.C., pled guilty on December 3, 2010, to securities fraud, money laundering, and making false statements to the FBI. Scarboro was sentenced to 26 months’ imprisonment by Chief Judge Robert Conrad, Jr., on May 4, 2011.
• James D. Jordan, 49, of El Paso, Texas, pled guilty on September 14, 2010, to conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Jordan was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment by Chief Judge Robert Conrad, Jr., on June 29, 2011.
• Stephen D. Lacy, 52, of Pawleys Island, S.C., pled guilty on December 9, 2010, to conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Lacy was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment by Chief Judge Robert Conrad, Jr., on May 4, 2011.

The details contained in this indictment are allegations. The defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. The conviction or guilty plea of any other person is not evidence of the guilt of any of the defendants.

This matter is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Kurt W. Meyers and Mark T. Odulio of the Western District of North Carolina, and the case against Jeffrey Muyres was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mark T. Odulio. The investigation is being handled by the FBI and the IRS.