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Comment by badfrog | Hacker News Reader

> Instead you go to an anonymous arb firm, for $1m in bonds, and you say, "okay we're going to sell you the bond that is actually ours, you will sell it back to us, here is your fee, now we can sell this bond back to the client and wash the fact that it is ours."

If this was actually how the world's biggest hedge funds work, somebody would have written a whistleblower article by now.

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Somebody did write a whistleblower article about D.E. Shaw, it was just about other aspects of their business/affairs [0]

> As soon as most applicants arrived at their first interview, they signed nondisclosure agreements. If hired, they signed more, which may be why former employees spoke with us anonymously

We don't know what we don't know. That having been said, I also believe that if what DES were doing were truly and obviously illegal, someone would have burst it by now. [0] https://www.propublica.org/article/hedge-fund-billionaires-d...

From a skim, that article doesn't seem to suggest that DE Shaw has done anything illegal. In fact, the paragraph after the one you quoted from makes it look like they work hard to stay within the bounds of the law:

> This secrecy and vigilance extended to the company’s extreme caution on legal and compliance issues. One of Shaw’s common sayings, repeated at an annual training session by a compliance officer, was that it was important to avoid risks and legal trouble because Shaw wanted to make sure that his kids could go to college.

You are right, the article didn't suggest anything illegal. It suggested instead a strong culture of NDAs. But again, I think something as illegal as the OP post in this thread suggested would have gotten some folks to whistleblow nonetheless.

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