Fabrice Tourre, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. vice president found liable for his role in a failed $1 billion investment, may have lost his case because jurors rejected his defense that as a junior employee he wasn’t primarily responsible for the transaction, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Tourre’s lawyers portrayed him as a young employee who was one of many Goldman Sachs employees who worked on the 2007 deal known as Abacus that had subprime mortgage-backed securities underlying the transaction. The SEC accused Tourre of intentionally misleading participants in Abacus about the role played by Paulson & Co., the hedge fund of billionaire John Paulson, which helped choose the portfolio of securities, then made a billion-dollar bet it would fail. Tourre was found liable by a jury in Manhattan yesterday on six of seven claims.
