Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, a founder of the hedge fund Access International Advisors, was found dead Tuesday in his office in Manhattan. His fund reportedly lost as much as $1.4 billion that had been invested with Bernard L. Madoff, the money manager accused of running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
Mr. de la Villehuchet, 65, was pronounced dead Tuesday morning, and a New York City Police spokesman, Paul Browne, told DealBook that he had apparently committed suicide. He was found with wounds to his arms, with one leg propped up on the desk and a trash can nearby to catch blood. (Read more about Mr. de la Villehuchet here.)
He had been trying to recover the money that Access International raised in Europe and invested through Mr. Madoff’s business, according to La Tribune, which first reported the news, citing an unnamed source.
According to New York City Police Commission Raymond Kelly, Mr. de la Villehuchet was at the office last night at 7 p.m. on Monday, working late. Unusually, he had asked the cleaning staff to help clean his office. Later in the evening, one of the firm’s partners asked security to check on the office and see if Mr. de la Villehuchet was still there.
The door was locked, Mr. Kelly told DealBook.
When security opened the door Tuesday morning, they found Mr. de la Villehuchet, with cuts to his arm, wrist and his bicep apparently made with a box cutter. No suicide note was found, and while pills were present, it is unknown if Mr. de la Villehuchet had ingested them.
Mr. de la Villehuchet’s firm managed Luxalpha, a $1.4 billion Luxembourg-based fund sold across Europe, invested in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. Access International last week called Mr. Madoff’s arrest “a shocking development” in a note to investors. Investors in the fund included a unit of Rothschild and several clients of the Swiss bank UBS.
UBS had been the custodian and administrator of the fund until this year when Access International took over. No one answered the phone at Access International’s New York office. No one responded to a phone call to Mr. de la Villehuchet’s home.
UBS has stated that Mr. Madoff was not on the bank’s wealth management recommended list as a direct investment option but it produced and sold funds containing the investment manager’s products. UBS would establish fund of funds structures at clients’ requests.
By early afternoon, a small scrum of reporters and photographers had gathered in front of the narrow entrance to Access International’s office on Madison Avenue in midtown Manhattan, only a few blocks away from Rockefeller Center.
–Zachery Kouwe, Michael Wilson and Michael J. de la Merced
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