Kim Karapetyan is missing. So, purportedly, is $20 million in his company’s assets. Karapetyan was the founder and manager of a Russian hedge fund called Blackfield Capital. Started in 2009, the fund used algorithms to trade off patterns in Moscow’s stock market.
Based on a Wall Street Journal article outlining the mysterious circumstances around Karapetyan’s disappearance, Blackfield was doing well enough to throw lavish parties with Russian boy bands and the man in charge was bringing in enough money to buy a $300,000 Aston Martin.
In 2013 Karapetyan began plans to bring his fund stateside and rented office space in 7 World Trade, a quick walk from Wall Street. That all changed last year when the United States tightened sanctions against Russia amid escalation in the conflict in Ukraine.
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Blackfield ended their lease at 7 World Trade and laid off all of their stateside staff.
Then in October it seems Karapetyan vanished. The Wall Street Journal reports:
The firm’s employees didn’t know anything was amiss until mid-October, when three men charged into Blackfield’s offices in an upscale complex along the Moscow River in central Moscow, said people who were there. The men, who didn’t identify themselves, said they were looking for Blackfield’s 29-year-old founder, Kim Karapetyan, according to the people who were there. But Mr. Karapetyan wasn’t in the office that day or the next, when senior executives explained to the staff of about 50 that there was no longer any money to pay their salaries, said one former senior executive and ex-employees. The executives disclosed that all the money in the company accounts—some $20 million, including investor cash—was also missing, they said. It couldn’t be determined whether investors were from Russia or other countries.
Stay with Yahoo Finance and we’ll bring you any updates as the search for Karapetyan continues.
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