Afternoon Reading: Breaking Away From the Peloton

The liquidation of Peloton’s ABS fund continues to be picked apart, with the FT.com’s Alphaville pointing out that Peloton won the credit award at the EuroHedge awards last month. Peloton co-founder Ron Beller was also one of the Goldman Sachs bankers robbed by rogue assistant Joyti De-Laurey a few years ago. Beller discovered the fraud when he discovered his bank account was “one or two million light,” the Telegraph remembers.

Tidbits
Dealbreaker’s John Carney asked yesterday the philosophical question, “Why do rogue traders always lose money?” Portfolio’s Felix Salmon answers that question today: because when they’re winning, they’re not rogues; Dooley could have just as easily made that much money. (Dooley himself blames his computer; was he using Windows Vista?)…Naked Capitalism asks whether the ratings agencies pushed monoline bond insurers into the structured finance business, which is what New York State Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo believes is what happened….Portfolio’s Business Spin blog notes that Microsoft and Yahoo are actually (maybe secretly) talking to each other, at least according to one Microsoft executive….Portfolio’s Hollywood Deals blog, written by Fred Schruers, writes about Ryan Kavanaugh, the founder of Relativity Capital, inking a $1 billion co-financing deal with Universal Pictures. Hedge fund Elliott Associates is backing Kavanaugh, who just received favorable news in a lawsuit against him by PR Michael Sitrick…Earlier this week, Bankers Ball blogged about interesting connections among private equity guys and the colleges they attended; indulge your conspiracy theories.