Einhorn big gets $204G fine

The fallout over New York hedge fund whiz kid David Einhorn’s investment in a UK pub chain continued yesterday with a former compliance officer at the fund and a second individual receiving stiff fines.

UK financial watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, fined former Greenlight Capital compliance officer Alexander Ten-Holter $204,000 for failing to ask questions about Einhorn’s sudden move to sell his entire stake in Punch Taverns in June 2009.

Ten-Holter is a UK trader at Einhorn’s $8 billion hedge fund, which once owned 13.3 percent of Punch Tavern’s stock.

“Ten-Holter’s approach to compliance oversight was wholly inadequate,” Tracey McDermott, the FSA’s acting director of enforcement and financial crime, said in a statement. “Serious compliance failures of this nature can have a dramatic effect on the orderliness and integrity of the markets.”

Greenlight said in a statement the action against Ten-Holter was “unwarranted.”

On Wednesday, FSA ordered Einhorn and Greenlight to fork over $11.2 million for “inadvertent” insider trading — selling shares ahead of a 2009 stock offering by the British pub operator.

FSA said Einhorn was given a heads-up about the risky stock offering by Punch brass.

Einhorn fired back, saying he knew management was dealing in “secret bad things,” but didn’t know what. He said he only agreed to pay the fine because he doesn’t believe his US hedge fund would get a “fair hearing” in the British court system.

The FSA yesterday also fined Casper Agnew, a trading desk director at JPMorgan Cazenove, $102,000 for failing to identify the “suspicions order” by Greenlight, or report it to the watchdog.