Archegos Capital is preparing for insolvency, triggered by banks’ attempts to recoup some of the $10bn they lost on its soured bets in March, the Financial Times reported. The family office run by Bill Hwang has hired restructuring advisers to assess potential legal claims from banks and to plan for a possible winding down of its operations. Six banks that acted as prime brokers to Archegos — Credit Suisse, Nomura, Morgan Stanley, UBS, MUFG and Mizuho — lost more than $10bn when they were forced to liquidate the family office’s positions in US-listed companies such as ViacomCBS after it failed to meet margin calls. A number of them are preparing to issue “letters of demand” to the firm — a request for payment ahead of launching a legal claim. They first want to finish closing out the Archegos positions; last week Credit Suisse said it had sold 97 per cent of the related securities. Lenders are also investigating whether Hwang’s family office withheld or provided incorrect information about the scale of its borrowing from other prime brokers.
