Investor who lost $1.4bn to Madoff kills himself

A French investment manager and the co-founder of a firm that raised money in Europe to be put into Bernard Madoff's fraud-hit scheme has committed suicide in his office in New York, media reports said.

Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, 65, a founder of the hedge fund Access International Advisors, was found dead on Tuesday in his office in Manhattan, the New York Times reported Tuesday, quoting police officials.

The French manager's fund reportedly lost as much as $1.4 bn that had been invested with Bernard L. Madoff, the money manager accused of running a $50 bn Ponzi scheme.

According to New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Villehuchet was at the office at 7 p.m. Monday, working late. Later in the evening, one of the firm’s partners asked security to check on the office and see if Villehuchet was still there.

"The door was locked," Kelly said, adding that when security opened the door Tuesday morning, they found Villehuchet, "with cuts to his arm, wrist and his bicep apparently made with a box cutter".

"No suicide note was found, and while pills were present, it is unknown if Villehuchet had ingested them," he said.

According to French newspaper La Tribune, Villehuchet had been trying to recover the money that Access International raised in Europe and invested through Madoff's business.

Madoff, whose fraud has ensnared Wall Street investors and charities around the world, is currently under house arrest while an investigation is underway. His assets have been frozen.

Polaris Software to invest Rs.350 mn for expansion

At a time when the domestic software sector is going slow on hiring of personnel and expansion, the city-based Rs.11-billion Polaris Software Lab is taking a contrarian path.

The company has decided to construct a new 1,500-seat facility at Siruseri near here with an outlay of Rs.350 million.

"Construction activity will start next quarter. We have 10 acres there," Polaris chairman and managing director Arun Jain told IANS.

Explaining the rationale of expansion when the global financial sector is facing a meltdown, he said: "The financial sector problem is mainly concentrated in the US. There are over 175 countries in the world. It is time to build capacity to take advantage of the uptime to come soon."

According to him, the proposed centre will serve the company's retail banking and insurance clients.

"We will go for new hiring as well as redeploy some of our people at the proposed centre," Jain said.

In Chennai and its surroundings, Polaris has its retail banking, insurance and testing centres.

Polaris, which last month acquired SEEC Inc, a US-based product and component services company for insurance vertical, is likely to expand insurance operations here.

"It will take a software services company at least a decade to transform into a product company. Today, Polaris has a comprehensive suite of banking software products," Jain said.

Speaking on the US banking giant Citigroup's investment in Polaris, Jain said: "Citigroup is a strategic and not a financial investor in Polaris. Citigroup and I embarked on a joint journey and neither of us can disembark midway."

Citigroup holds 43 percent stake in Polaris through its group company Orbitech Ltd. Polaris had acquired another Citigroup company OrbiTech Solutions in 2002.

According to him, the acquisition got Polaris intellectual property rights for a suite of products and the company made further investments to build a robust range of solutions.