Valvani committed suicide by stabbing himself with a knife.
AB Wire
The Indian American hedge fund manager Sanjay Valvani who committed suicide on Monday at his house in New York, by stabbing his neck with a knife, left behind a suicide note, in which he professed his innocence.
Valvani,44, was described by friends and family as an adoring father, an enthusiastic philanthropist and a friendly neighbor. Federal prosecutors described him as an insider trader who deserved as much as 65 years in prison, reported Bloomberg.
Valvani was charged last week with illegally profiting on secret information about drugs in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval pipeline. Prosecutors said two cooperating witnesses would implicate him, one of which is a former FDA official Valvani hired as a consultant at Visium Asset Management, where Valvani was a partner.
On Monday evening, Valvani was found by his wife, Harjot Sandhu. He professed his innocence in a suicide note, according to the Associated Press. On Wednesday, the New York City Medical Examiner ruled his death a suicide and said he died of stab wounds to the neck.
“He wasn’t just some kind of hardened investment guy,” said David Pyott, former chief executive officer of Allergan Plc, reported Bloomberg. “He was out-going, had charisma. That is why I was even more shocked by all of this.”
Shibani Malhotra, a former health-care industry analyst, said Valvani maintained his innocence in texts they shared last week. “He was an investor that had a high moral standard and moral code,” she said.
Prosecutors said Valvani personally made more than $32 million on the trades.
Valvani grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the son of immigrants from India. His father, C. Valvani, was director of drug delivery systems research at Upjohn Co., now part of Pfizer Inc., and the holder of several patents.
Sanjay Valvani attended the University of Michigan and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His first job on Wall Street was a summer internship at the now-defunct Bear Stearns Cos. in 2000. The following year he started covering specialty pharmacies as a sell-side associate at Salomon Smith Barney, according to his profile on Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business website.
In 2003, Valvani joined Balyasny Asset Management, where medical school graduate Jacob Gottlieb was a portfolio manager.
Valvani was responsible for as much as $2 billion of Visium’s $8 billion of assets under management at its peak. After Gottlieb announced in March that his firm was under investigation, investors started asking for their money back. Now Visium is selling or winding down its funds.
Bloomberg reported in 2012, Valvani pledged $250,000 to endow two scholarship funds at Fuqua, where he earned his MBA in 2001. Valvani named one of the scholarship funds after Associate Dean for Admissions Liz Riley Hargrove, who said she knew Valvani from the time he was in graduate school.
“His natural charisma and genuine passion for pursuing his education stood out to me,” Hargrove said in an e-mail. “My heart is simply broken.”
Valvani and his wife supported the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy and he served on the board of Urban Arts Partnership, a charity for arts education in New York City and Los Angeles classrooms.
Valvani lived with his wife, two daughters and their two dogs in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of New York City, in a brick townhouse built before the Civil War.
2 Comments
Did Sanjay Valvani cross paths with Mathew Martoma at Duke or elsewhere?
It’s easy to be an “enthusiastic philanthropist” when you’re using OTHER PEOPLES’ MONEY.