Telegraph.co.uk- When that old fraudster Robert Maxwell died in mysterious circumstances, City wags joked that police were interviewing individuals with a motive to murder him – starting with the entire staff of Mirror Group Newspapers.
A similar embarassment of choice faces Financial Services Authority (FSA) investigators as they seek to identify the source of stock market rumours that briefly knocked £3bn off the value of Britain’s biggest mortgage lender.
Hundreds of hedge funds have sprung up in recent years to profit from falling share prices, unlike old-fashioned unit and investment trusts, which largely rely on rising prices to make their money grow. How do the hedgies do it? "Shorting" is Square Mile jargon for borrowing shares whose price you expect to fall, selling them and then buying them back – hopefully, at a lower price – before you need to return them to the lender.
