Philly's Arvedlund blew whistle, throws book at Madoff
Philadelphia's Erin Arvedlund, who questioned Bernard Madoff's methods in a 2001 column, follows with a book on Madoff's rise and fall: Don't Ask, Don't Tell
"Investors need, or should want, transparency in their money manager's investment strategy. But Madoff's investors rave about his performance - even though they don't understand how he does it," Erin Arvedlund warned in a Barron's column titled "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," back in 2001.
She asked the right questions, and got stonewalled. It wasn't quite an expose, more of a 'Buyer beware,' but that's more than regulators, investors and the rest of the mainstream financial press did until the funds blew up, investors lost $65 billion, and Madoff went to prison. Read Arvedlund's prescient article here.
Tomorrow, Arvedlund's 300-page follow-up, Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernard Madoff, is due out from Penguin Group (USA) Inc.'s Portfolio label.
Besides her three-year Barron's stint, Arvedlund also covered business in Russia for the Moscow Times and the New York Times, and pulled a Wall Street shift at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Her local ties: Grew up in Wilmington (Ursuline '84, Archmere '88, before going off to Tufts), where Dad is money manager Dick Arvedlund of Cypress Capital Management. And she's settled with her husband, McGivney & Kluger PC litigator Patrick Beattie, in Center City, which is commuting distance from her Wall Street sources and freelance gigs, as they start a family.