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Ken Griffin and Izzy Englander’s funds likely to have outperformed wider hedge fund industry

Ken Griffin’s Citadel gained 15.1 per cent in 2024, just ahead of longtime rival Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management, with the two firms beating the wider hedge fund industry in a year dominated by a soaring US stock market.

Citadel’s flagship hedge fund Wellington was up 1.7 per cent in December, while Millennium made 2.5 per cent that month, according to investors, even as global stock markets gave back some ground. Millennium finished the year up 15 per cent.

Citadel has $66bn in assets, while Millennium manages $72.1bn. The two firms declined to comment.

Their founders are pioneers of the multi-manager hedge fund model. These funds trade a wide range of strategies across equities, fixed income, commodities, currencies and other markets.

Citadel and Millennium appear to have outpaced the performance of the wider $4.5tn hedge fund industry last year. Hedge funds on average gained 2.4 per cent in November and are up 10.2 per cent in the first 11 months of 2024, according to Hedge Fund Research. The data provider has not yet published figures for December.

Last year, the S&P 500 index of US blue-chip companies rose 23.3 per cent, on the back of big gains for a handful of tech companies.

Citadel makes both directional and arbitrage bets, while Millennium runs a market-neutral strategy, which aims to make money regardless of the direction of the market.

Sometimes known as platforms or pod shops, multi-managers typically employ a centralised risk system designed to prevent big losses. The sector has become the most popular segment of the global hedge fund industry, with its promise of consistent returns with low volatility, regardless of market swings, resonating with clients such as pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.

Multi-managers were up 6.8 per cent in the first 11 months of last year, according to HFR. Industry gains last year were led by equity-focused hedge funds, which were up 3.1 per cent in November and 13.1 per cent in the first 11 months of the year. Performance in November was driven by Donald Trump’s US presidential election victory, as managers and investors positioned themselves for more business-friendly policies from the incoming administration.

Citadel and Millennium are among a clutch of large hedge funds to have delivered double-digit gains last year.

Balyasny Asset Management, another multi-manager hedge fund, gained 1.8 per cent in December to end the year up 13.6 per cent, according to a person familiar with the situation. Balyasny declined to comment.

ExodusPoint, a multi-manager hedge fund founded by former Millennium head of fixed income Michael Gelband, was up 11.3 per cent last year, according to investors. ExodusPoint declined to comment.

D.E. Shaw’s flagship multi-strategy Composite hedge fund gained 18 per cent in 2024, and its second-largest fund Oculus, which mainly takes macro bets, surged 36 per cent, its best-ever year, according to a person familiar with the situation. The $65bn firm is expected to give back half of last year’s profits from the two funds to clients, the person said.

D.E. Shaw declined to comment on the figures, which were first reported by Bloomberg.

Dan Loeb’s Third Point Offshore Fund, which focuses on event-driven and value-oriented strategies, lost 1.4 per cent in December and ended 2024 up 24.2 per cent, according to investors. Third Point declined to comment.

Activist Investor Elliott Had Busiest Year Since 2018

Elliott Investment Management just finished its busiest year since 2018 as an activist investor.

The hedge fund was involved in 15 activist campaigns in 2024, the most of any major activist and the most since it ran 20 campaigns in 2018, according to FactSet. It added 10 directors to public company boards, including at Tinder owner Match Group and building-solutions provider Johnson Controls.

At Southwest Airlines, Elliott launched a proxy fight that culminated in half the board resigning and the airline’s executive chairman, Gary Kelly, announcing his early retirement after Elliott called a special meeting.

Elliott partner Marc Steinberg also got a board seat at Etsy following private negotiations.

Elliott influenced changes at other companies in 2024 including Texas Instruments, Honeywell, Starbucks and the big wireless-tower owner Crown Castle.

The firm, which managed some $70 billion as of June 30, has also been putting more and more money behind its activist bets. Elliott had an average position size of $1.7 billion in 2024, based on disclosed and reported figures.

Elliott’s strategies include real-estate investing, private equity and distressed debt. But the firm is best-known for its work in shareholder activism. Meanwhile, other big-name activists have slowed their fire.

U.S. steps up strikes from desert bases against an enemy it defeated half a decade ago

Islamic State militants were already resurgent last year in parts of Syria and Iraq. Then in December, the Assad regime collapsed, furnishing them with fresh supplies of weapons from stocks abandoned by the Syrian army.

The group that once terrorized the Middle East and inspired attacks elsewhere in the world is looking to exploit Syria’s uncertain future to rebuild its influence—half a decade after U.S.-led forces broke its hold on swaths of territory and millions of people.

In a sign of its persistent appeal, a U.S. Army veteran in a pickup flying an Islamic State flag drove through a crowd of people early on New Year’s Day in New Orleans, killing 15 and injuring 30 in what authorities called a terrorist attack. It wasn’t clear what connections, if any, the assailant might have had to the group, but analysts have warned of lone-wolf incidents and copycat attacks.

The fight against the remnants of Islamic State had until recently happened in the shadows, with hundreds of U.S. Special Forces based in Syria’s hinterlands working with Kurdish militias to carry out airstrikes and raids. The U.S. has since ramped up its attacks, including in areas where the airspace was previously controlled by the government of Bashar al-Assad and its Russian allies, military analysts say.

On Dec. 8, hours after the Assad regime fell, the U.S. said it hit 75 Islamic State targets with dozens of strikes involving B-52 bombers and F-15 warplanes. About a week later, the U.S. said it had killed at least a dozen militants with another airstrike. Three days later, it said it had killed two more Islamic State operatives, including one of its top leaders.

On Sunday, France deployed Rafale jet fighters and a Reaper drone against two targets in Syria that French officials said were linked to Islamic State.

There are concerns about the effectiveness of periodic bombings amid the rapidly changing regional landscape. The Kurdish groups that have been crucial in fighting and containing Islamic State and keeping its fighters contained are under new pressure from groups backed by Turkey.

The Turkish government sees the Kurdish groups as terrorists and is pressing its interests in the country now under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that once had ties to Islamic State and al Qaeda, which it later renounced.

It is also uncertain how long the U.S. military will be able to maintain its presence of more than 2,000 troops in Syria and about 2,500 in Iraq. Days after Assad fled Syria, Iraqi officials visiting Washington expressed concern about the potential resurgence of Islamic State and asked the U.S. to reassess a recently concluded withdrawal agreement that called for nearly all U.S. forces to leave within two years.

Any changes to the U.S. presence in Iraq—which provides critical support to the presence in Syria—will be up to President-elect Donald Trump, who cut back troop numbers during his first administration.

Rep. Mike Waltz, (R., Fla.), a retired Special Forces officer who is expected to be Trump’s national security adviser, said last month on Fox News that while the president-elect is focused on keeping U.S. troops out of foreign conflicts, Trump is “clear-eyed” about the threat ISIS poses in Syria.

The concerns are driven by a significant uptick in Islamic State activity. U.S. and Kurdish officers told The Wall Street Journal over the summer that the group is training new recruits and mustering forces in the Syrian desert in hopes of resurrecting its dream of ruling a new Islamist empire. Fighters increased their pace of attacks in Syria and Iraq last year, targeting checkpoints, detonating car bombs and maneuvering to free their jailed comrades.

Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim group, emerged from the al Qaeda branch that fought American and coalition forces after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The U.S. withdrew from the country in 2011 as the Arab Spring was unleashing political and military instability around the Middle East. Islamic State took advantage and in 2014 seized some 38,000 square miles of territory in Syria and Iraq, an area slightly smaller than Virginia, and declared it a caliphate ruling over 12 million people.

In a tour of the Middle East in December, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that the militants would seek to regroup in the vacuum left by the collapse of the Assad regime.

“We are determined to make sure that Daesh cannot re-emerge,” he told reporters, using a common Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani said last week Islamic State had recently seized a large quantity of weapons belonging to the Syrian army, which it could use to expand in the region. He said Iraq and the international coalition were monitoring and trying to stop weapons transfers.

Another major concern for U.S. military officials and their regional partners is the security of prisons and detention camps in northeastern Syria that hold Islamic State fighters and their families.

The camps, which according to a United Nations estimate contain up to 45,000 people, are guarded by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces. If those forces are defeated or distracted by a Turkish-backed military campaign, Islamic State militants could find a way to slip their confinement.

“Anything that happens in these prisons or camps, we will all find ourselves—inside Syria and outside it—confronting those terrorists,” the Iraqi prime minister said in a televised interview last week.

Since the Assad regime collapsed, Islamic State has only attacked areas controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed Kurdish group, according to Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank, who has tracked the group for years. But greater freedom of movement across Syria may have allowed Islamic State cells to move to other parts of the country where they are biding their time, Tamimi assessed.

“I don’t think they’re going to recreate anything like what they had in 2014, but there is a real risk that you get this sudden surge of violence and wave of attacks that then HTS and its allies will need to find ways to crack down on,” he said.

The Iraqi government is now rethinking its posture toward the U.S. troop presence amid concerns the power vacuum in parts of Syria leaves it vulnerable to a cross-border surge by Islamic State, Western officials said.

Within days of Assad’s fall, U.S. military officials in Iraq saw a different tone from Iraqi officials, who were suddenly amenable to deeper cooperation over everything from logistics to drone surveillance, the officials said.

The message the Iraqis are delivering to the U.S. is, “you want to stick around, please do. Take your time,” said Michael Knights, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. But he said the Iraqis would only allow operations against Sunni extremists in Syria.

With only weeks left in the Biden administration, decisions about the future of the U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria will soon be in the hands of Trump, who sought to pull out of Iraq and Syria during his first term, only to halt full withdrawals himself under pressure from his advisers.

Under the withdrawal agreement, hundreds of U.S. and coalition troops based in Baghdad, western Iraq and other parts of the country would leave by next September, followed by a drawdown of forces in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil by the end of the following year. A handful of troops could remain after 2026 in an advisory capacity and for missions including providing logistical support to American troops based in Syria, officials said.

“The situation remains very dynamic, constantly evolving and we are evaluating developments on the ground constantly,” said Farhad Alaaldin, policy adviser to the Iraqi prime minister. “The development of this relationship will require close cooperation and mutual effort to shape its path forward.”

Adding the ride-hailing company could be a way for Amazon to gas up its robotaxi project.

Robotaxis are quickly gaining ground, largely thanks to Alphabet-backed Waymo, which announced in October that it was completing more than 100,000 paid rides for passengers per week. Waymo plans to enter new regions next year. And everything in the market is sure to intensify further as Tesla tries to begin mass-producing its own robotaxis in 2026.

Existing ride-hailing services are in for a period of disruption. Uber is one of those companies, and to give the company credit, it has been preparing for a future full of autonomous cabs. Uber’s chief competitor, Lyft, is in a far sorrier state, which makes it a ripe acquisition target, and I think Amazon will buy it.

This piece is part of our annual Predictions package. Here’s another educated guess we made—this one about Elon Musk and TikTok—and here’s how our predictions about 2024 fared.

What ails Lyft? It remains a distant No. 2 to Uber, and I was intrigued to see some numbers from third-party data provider Yipit that Andreessen Horowitz’s Alex Immerman recently shared on X: The figures show Waymo’s quick growth in San Francisco in recent months and suggest it now has the same market share as Lyft in terms of gross bookings. (Lyft CEO David Risher later disputed those conclusions.)

Uber has inked partnerships with firms such as Waymo to make robotaxis available on its app. That should help Uber capture a slice of the growing demand for self-driving taxis and insulate itself from losing market share. Lyft has tried to make inroads into autonomous driving too but with less success than Uber. It had struck a partnership with Argo AI—investing in the autonomous-driving startup in the hopes of incorporating its technology into Lyft’s business—but then Argo shut down in 2022. And then last May, Motional, another autonomous-driving startup, said it was pausing robotaxi deployments with both Lyft and Uber as it culled its workforce.

So Lyft could certainly benefit an acquirer with deep pockets, but what would Amazon get from Lyft? The size of Lyft’s existing ride-hailing network—it had 24 million active riders in the third quarter of 2024—could be key to helping Amazon commercialize its own autonomous vehicles.

Back in 2020, Amazon bought its own autonomous-driving startup, Zoox, for over $1 billion. The company has been testing Zoox vehicles in several major U.S. cities and has said it soon plans to offer its first rides to the general public. Amazon acquiring Lyft would make the Zoox robotaxis an immediate and credible threat to Waymo, and it’s easy to picture a world where Amazon expands Zoox—similar to how Uber has added Uber Eats—with autonomous Amazon vehicles whizzing around and dropping off food. (The future really looks Jetsonian when you imagine how Amazon could take what it learns from the combined Lyft and Zoox businesses and apply it en masse to a whole fleet of autonomous vehicles.)

Lyft’s total enterprise value of just under $5 billion would make it an attractively priced target for Amazon, which ended September with over $75 billion in cash on its balance sheet. True, it could also make an offer in stock and take advantage of an almost 50% increase in Amazon shares in 2024. Even better, Lyft is now generating cash—$243 million in the third quarter.

Oh, did I mention that Lyft CEO David Risher has a history with Amazon? He was one of Jeff Bezos’ earliest employees. That would make an Amazon purchase of Lyft a homecoming of sorts. Ahhh, if only all taxi journeys could end so smoothly.

The designer and cofounder of the luxury brand has died at 93.

MILAN — Rosita Missoni, a key point of reference for the Missoni family and a cofounder of the fashion brand, has died at age 93.

She met her husband Ottavio, known as Tai, in 1948, when he was competing in the London Olympics. The then-Rosita Jelmini was on an English language course chaperoned by the Swiss Sisters of the Holy Cross.

“After visiting castles and museums, the nuns concurred that a trip to Wembley [where the Olympics were being held] was a must,” she recalled. “That’s when I saw Tai; he passed right alongside me, and I couldn’t help but notice how good-looking and athletic he was. And I predicted he would win because he was racing with the number 331 on his sports bib and seven [adding the digits] had always been my lucky number.” (Tai Missoni competed at the Olympics in the 400-meter hurdles, where he won his quarterfinal and would finish sixth in the final, and in the 4×400 meter relay, where the team did not finish.)

They married in 1953 in Golasecca and settled in Gallarate, both towns in Lombardy. In Gallarate that year, the couple set up a small knitwear workshop they called Maglificio Jolly. Tai Missoni had begun dabbling in fashion six years earlier when, along with his friend and teammate Giorgio Oberweger, he produced wool tracksuits to be worn by the Italian Olympic team in London. His trainer had a small knitting company in Trieste, a city in northeastern Italy, and together they made the first wool tracksuits which, he marveled later in his typical understated way, met with strong demand.

The Missonis were often described as “color geniuses” and were the first to make coordinating separates in different patterns, a zigzag top with a polka dot skirt, for example.

The zigzag patterns came about as a result of using technology that they hadn’t tried before. “We could only do stripes, and then we started doing horizontal and vertical and little by little added more complicated stitches, plaids and jacquards,” Rosita recalled. “Then we found the Raschel machines that do the zigzag, and that was that. My grandparents had used them to make multicolored embroidered shawls with big rose patterns and long fringes, all hand-knotted, the kind you throw on lampshades.”

In 1967, the Missoni presentation at Palazzo Pitti became a scandal because the pair had sent models down the runway braless in lamé tops. They were briefly banned from showing there.

While building the Missoni company together and expanding the brand around the world — famously sponsored by Diana Vreeland in the U.S. — the couple shared a belief in remaining artisans and growing at a sustainable pace. “Tai would say, why work more if we can’t have the time to enjoy and spend what we earn?” Rosita recalled.

They built a house surrounded by trees and flowers and overlooking the majestic Mount Rosa near the factory in Sumirago, raising their children Vittorio, Angela and Luca there. It was a home that became a meeting point for their friends, artists and journalists, where the informal and welcoming atmosphere never changed through the years — excellent wine and food included. Beginning in 1996, Tai and Rosita gradually passed control of their fashion empire to their children Luca, Vittorio and Angela, handing the design responsibilities to their daughter. In January 2013 — the family’s annus horribilis — Vittorio Missoni died in a plane crash off the Venezuelan coast. In May that same year, his father died at age 92.

In 2018, FSI Mid-Market Growth Equity Fund acquired a 41.2 percent stake in the company, while the Missoni family retained control with 58.8 percent of the shares. Rosita maintained the title of honorary president, continuing to be involved in the brand’s home collection — a project always close to her heart. In fact, in 2006 Rosita spearheaded a deal with Rezidor SAS, signing an international licensing agreement to develop a new luxury brand in the hotel industry: Hotel Missoni. The first three were opened within two years in Edinburgh, Dubai and Kuwait. The agreement was terminated after a few years, much to Rosita’s chagrin.

Upon the sale, her daughter Angela took on the role of president, eventually relinquishing the creative director title.

German conservative leader predicted to be next chancellor rejects retaliatory tariffs

The German conservative leader Friedrich Merz, who is in pole position to become the country’s next chancellor, has said the EU should make a fresh attempt at a sweeping free trade deal with the US once Donald Trump becomes president.

“We need a positive agenda with the US, which would benefit both American and European consumers,” the Christian Democrat leader said in an interview with DPA news agency. “A new European-American joint free trade initiative could avert a dangerous tariff spiral.”

It is unclear what kind of reaction Merz will get in Washington. Trump halted negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a planned trade agreement between the EU and US, shortly after becoming president in 2017 and went on to impose tariffs on European imports.

Merz was speaking less than two months before snap elections in Germany prompted by the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s fragile three-party coalition in November. Polls suggest Merz’s centre-right CDU/CSU bloc is on course for victory.

Ahead of Trump’s re-entry into the White House on January 20, Germans are becoming increasingly apprehensive about the potential negative impact of his so-called Maga (“make America great again”) policies on the Eurozone’s largest economy. 

In his first term Trump aggressively pursued an “America First” approach aimed at closing the US trade deficit and boosting homegrown production, which often entailed trade conflicts with some of the US’s closest allies.

In a sign of turbulence to come, he warned last month that the US would impose tariffs on EU goods such as cars and machinery unless the bloc stepped up its purchases of US oil and gas. 

A study last year by the German Economic Institute in Cologne (IW) predicted the German economy would incur losses of up to €180bn over a second four-year Trump term as a result of a trade war between the US and Europe.

It said German carmakers and machine-building companies would be particularly hard hit by Trump’s plans to raise import tariffs to 10 or even 20 per cent. The US was Germany’s biggest trading partner in the first half of 2024.

Speaking to DPA, Merz said he expected tougher conditions for European business when Trump becomes president. “It will be challenging,” he said. The EU should, Merz added, expect the US to focus on safeguarding its own interests, including by imposing high import tariffs. “But our response to that shouldn’t be to start with our own tariffs,” he said.

Instead, the EU should concentrate on restoring its declining competitiveness, and then tell the Americans: “Yes, we are prepared to face this competition with you, too.” He added: “The right response is to react with innovation and good products.”

Merz has pledged to improve the competitiveness of the German economy, which is stuck in its first two-year slump since the early 2000s, if he becomes chancellor.

In its manifesto the CDU/CSU says it will reduce corporate taxation to 25 per cent from about 30 per cent currently, cut social security contributions, halve electricity network charges for industrial customers and slash bureaucracy.

Other parties, such as Scholz’s Social Democrats, and some economists have warned that many of Merz’s proposals are unfunded.

Merz said Germany must reduce corporate tax rates and become a more attractive place to do business in order to better compete with the US, where tax credits provided under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act have prompted many German companies to consider moving production to the US.

He said Germany’s non-wage labour costs such as social security payments were also too high. “You can’t resolve that on a European level, you have to do it on a national basis.”

Indeed, the country’s non-wage labour costs are now at their highest level ever, according to figures released on Thursday, thanks to an increase in contributions to medical insurance, which came into effect at the start of the year. Some 42.3 per cent of gross wages go towards medical, social and unemployment insurance, according to calculations by the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper.

Des milliers d’épargnants s’estiment floués par les anciens dirigeants de la chaîne bio, depuis reprise par Carrefour. Ils réclament réparation en justice. L’Informé s’est procuré des documents inédits.

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Autorité des marchés financiers, Brigade de recherche et d’investigations financières, DGCCRF… Il aura fallu sept ans à ces trois administrations pour produire deux rapports d’une centaine de pages, que l’Informé a pu consulter, sur le scandale Bio c’Bon-Marne et Finance. Deux dirigeants de ces sociétés, Jean-Bernard Thierry Brissaud * et Thierry Chouraqui, doivent être jugés en mai 2025 pour « pratiques commerciales trompeuses ». Alors que la chaîne de produits bios - 72 magasins aujourd’hui - a été rachetée en 2020 par Carrefour suite à son dépôt de bilan, ce procès est attendu par des milliers de petits épargnants tombés dans ce qu’ils considèrent comme un schéma de « Ponzi à la française ».

Un retour en arrière s’impose. Née en 2008, la chaîne de magasins Bio c’Bon a très vite choisi de grandir de manière assez originale dans le secteur, en faisant appel aux particuliers. De 2010 à 2022, l’enseigne et sa société d’immobilier sœur Marne et Finance ont commercialisé deux produits d’investissement via des conseillers en patrimoine : BCBB pour financer l’ouverture de magasins Bio c’Bon et ICBS pour placer des fonds dans des murs gérés par Marne et Finance. Le profil des investisseurs est varié : il va de la congrégation religieuse au boucher-charcutier, en passant par des agriculteurs, un chef d’entreprise dans l’aéronautique et une société de distribution cinématographique spécialisée sur les grands classiques du cinéma français ! Alors qu’ils pensaient mettre leurs billes dans des placements garantis, plus de 5 000 investisseurs ont perdu environ 320 millions d’euros dans l’effondrement de deux structures.

Parmi eux, les Jestin ont perdu « l’argent de toute une vie ». Elle ancienne institutrice et lui cadre dans l’agriculture, Françoise et Louis Jestin décident de vendre leur gîte et leur maison dans le Finistère en 2019 à l’âge de 70 ans. Ces habitués du Crédit Agricole se tournent vers un conseiller en investissement financier (CIF) pour placer leur argent - sur la recommandation très insistante d’amis proches. Ou plutôt d’ex-amis. « On se demande s’ils n’ont pas touché quelque chose dans l’opération », souffle Françoise. Charmant et affable, l’expert en placements leur inspire confiance. Lorsqu’il les enjoint à placer tout leur argent sur un projet d’immobilier soi-disant garanti et très rentable, les retraités tiquent un peu. Mais ils se mettent finalement d’accord : ce sera 40 000 sur une assurance-vie et le solde, soit 200 000 euros, sur ce mystérieux placement juteux, du nom d’ICBB, le véhicule financier lancé par une des sociétés contrôlées par Marne et Finance. Au moment où ils signent, l’AMF enquête déjà depuis 18 mois et vient de transmettre une alerte au parquet de Paris. En 2020, alors que Bio c’Bon connaît déjà des difficultés financières, le couple s’étonne de ne pas recevoir les intérêts prévus dans le contrat, soit 6 % ; ils parviennent néanmoins à les toucher, au prix de nombreuses relances de leur CIF, pendant deux ans.

Mais le 8 septembre 2022, quand Louis Jestin se présente à l’Assemblée générale de Marne et Finance, dans des locaux luxueux situés non loin des Champs-Élysées, c’est la douche froide. « On nous a annoncé que les actifs étaient transférés dans une autre société. J’ai alors demandé quelle était leur valeur au nouveau dirigeant, Patrick Schiltz m’a répondu qu’elle ne correspondait plus qu’à 30 % de la mise de départ. » Quatre jours plus tard, Marne et Finance est placée en redressement judiciaire.

Commence alors une longue descente au bout de l’angoisse. Ils n’osent en parler à personne, se referment et broient du noir - jusqu’à une tentative de suicide pour Françoise. « On a souvent honte, c’est un sentiment profond, ça nous pourrit la vie. Mais en fait il n’y a pas de raison d’avoir honte, on a été victime d’une arnaque, voilà », résume Louis. À court d’argent, ils font un emprunt pour se payer un avocat. Louis se rapproche de l’association Cpabon, qui regroupe 1400 victimes des deux sociétés, en devient le trésorier. « Ça nous a permis d’être moins seuls, l’association a été un vrai soutien psychologique. Et puis on a enfin compris ce qui s’était passé. »

À commencer par l’étrange motivation de leur conseiller financier à concentrer leur placement sur un seul support. Comme quelque 300 autres, les victimes apprendront plus tard qu’il a touché une commission de 6 % des sommes initialement versées, puis 0,6 % en intérêt annuel. Certains d’entre eux ont vendu plusieurs millions d’euros de contrats. En récompense, l’un d’eux a même reçu en 2023 la « pyramide d’argent » dans la catégorie « Capital Investissement société Immobilière ». « Dans ces dossiers, ce qui est caractéristique c’est la légèreté avec laquelle les courtiers ont vendu ces produits, on omettant les risques - notamment de faillite des sociétés » souligne l’avocat François de Cambriaire, qui défend une dizaine de victimes.

Le produit ICBS, pour Immo Capital Building System, vendu aux Jestin comme une action d’une société détentrice d’immobilier, n’en est pas vraiment une : c’est plutôt un titre de créance. Il a été cédé à 5 545 investisseurs entre 2010 et 2022 pour un montant total de 249 millions d’euros, et réparti dans 134 filiales de Marne et Finance qui achetaient des biens immobiliers. En octobre 2022, les administrateurs estiment les actifs à 29,5 millions d’euros seulement, plus de 8 fois moins.

Dès 2019, les investisseurs inquiets avaient commencé à réclamer le remboursement de leur mise. Mais ils se sont heurtés à une clause dite « Gates », discrètement ajoutée aux contrats qu’ils ont signés auprès de leur conseiller financier et qui permet de suspendre les remboursements en cas d’afflux de demandes. Au total, selon les derniers calculs de la DGCCRF, seulement 46 millions d’euros ont été restitués lors des demandes de rachat du véhicule financier ICBS. Soit un solde de 203 millions d’euros envolés dans la nature pour Marne et Finance. Côté Bio c’Bon, où le schéma a sensiblement été le même, 2 800 épargnants ont perdu 117 millions d’euros. Soit un total de 320 millions d’euros disparus et un nombre de victimes impressionnant : entre 5 000 et 7 000. Souvent des commerçants, des agriculteurs, conseillés par leur assureur qu’ils connaissaient depuis longtemps. « Le nombre exact est compliqué à obtenir, puisque les investisseurs ont souvent misé sur les deux structures, explique Maître Dimitri Pincent, avocat de nombreux plaignants et de l’association CpaBon. Et comme la tenue des registres n’a pas été rigoureuse, certaines victimes ne sont pas reconnues comme actionnaires, alors que d’autres qui font partie des rares investisseurs ayant racheté leur contrat le sont toujours ! »

Groupe de distribution ou schéma de Ponzi ?

Mais comment expliquer une telle débâcle ? Pour les ex-dirigeants, la chute de Marne et Finance s’explique notamment par celle de Bio c’Bon : lorsque l’enseigne a plongé en 2020, la seconde structure Marne et Finance n’a pas pu faire face aux demandes de remboursement soudaines. Les deux sociétés partageaient le même PDG, Thierry Chouraqui, le même fondateur et actionnaire de l’ombre, Thierry Brissaud, et le même système de financement. Selon l’enquête de l’AMF, Bio c’Bon et Marne et Finance constituent « un groupe de fait » en raison de leurs participations croisées et de la similitude de leurs dirigeants et de leur fonctionnement.

Interrogé par la Brigade de recherche et d’investigations financières, un conseiller financier de la société Patrimea assure avoir « demandé (à un dirigeant de Bio c’Bon) de prouver qu’ils n’utilisaient pas les investisseurs entrants pour financer les sortants, et il avait été affirmatif, c’était les cash-flows de l’activité qui permettait de financer les sortants », explique-t-il.

Selon l’association de plaignants Cpabon, les cash-flows étant insuffisants, le mécanisme de financement était au contraire un schéma de Ponzi délibéré : les premiers pouvaient être remboursés… mais pas les suivants.

Les plaignants plaident aussi une communication trompeuse. Au premier coup d’œil, l’investisseur était en effet rassuré par l’adossement de l’investissement immobilier à un vrai business. Mais à y regarder de plus près, la chaîne de magasins Bio c’Bon finançait sa forte croissance par endettement, avec un engagement hors-bilan qui faisait d’elle un investissement risqué, « proche d’une start-up » souligne le rapport d’enquête de la DGCCRF. Si bien que les arguments présentés dans les plaquettes d’investissement tirés de l’historique de la chaîne bio étaient « fallacieux » estime l’administration.

C’est sur ces arguments notamment que plusieurs épargnants ont déjà été partiellement indemnisés, lors de poursuites engageant la responsabilité des CIF, et de leur assurance. Ainsi, le 8 février 2024, le tribunal de Bourgoin-Jallieu a demandé à MMA de dédommager des investisseurs à hauteur de la quasi-totalité de leur investissement. Le tribunal a notamment reproché aux conseillers de s’être contenté de diffuser des plaquettes « comportant des erreurs parfois grossières », « sans analyse préalable sur la fiabilité des offres, sur l’existence des sociétés, sur la publication de leurs comptes annuels, ou encore sur la composition et le montant de leur capital ».

Les petits épargnants ne sont pas les seules victimes. « Ce qu’ils ont fait, c’est de la cavalerie, explique à l’Informé un investisseur des débuts de Bio c’Bon, qui a perdu 250 000 euros dans l’aventure. Dès qu’il y avait de l’argent dans une société, ils le faisaient passer dans une autre pour prétendre qu’il y avait de la trésorerie. Au total il y en avait une centaine… » . Un récit que le fondateur de Bio c’Bon réfute catégoriquement : « c’est l’alerte de l’AMF qui a provoqué la chute de Bio c’Bon » en incitant les investisseurs à demander des remboursements, et en empêchant la société à continuer à se financer assure Thierry Brissaud à l’Informé.

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