Federal securities regulators accused a former portfolio manager at Oppenheimer & Company yesterday of misleading investors about the performance of a fund, a rare enforcement action involving the private-equity industry, The New York Times reported yesterday. The Securities and Exchange Commission contends that Brian Williamson issued quarterly reports and marketing materials that inflated the performance results of an Oppenheimer private-equity fund. In March, Oppenheimer agreed to pay $2.8 million to resolve its role in the case. But Williamson is fighting the charges and has hired a criminal defense lawyer to represent him. In recent years, the SEC’s asset-management unit, which brought the Oppenheimer case, has stepped up its focus on the private-equity business. One area of focus has been with how private-equity firms value their holdings and calculate performance. Unlike funds that invest in publicly traded stocks, private-equity firms own companies whose values can be hard to measure.
