Cuomo sues Bank of NY Mellon unit
NEW YORK attorney general Andrew Cuomo sued a Bank of New York Mellon Corp unit and two of its former senior officers yesterday, claiming that they kept clients in the dark about problems they learned about involving Bernard Madoff’s investment firm.
The lawsuit claims that Ivy Asset Management knew that Madoff was not investing client funds as advertised, yet did not disclose such concerns to clients in an effort to bring in millions of dollars of advisory fees.
Cuomo’s lawsuit also targets former Ivy chief executive Lawrence Simon and former chief investment officer Howard Wohl. The attorney general alleged that Ivy clients, including dozens of New York union pension and welfare plans and hundreds of investors, lost more than $227m after Madoff’s Ponzi scheme collapsed.