Alphabay in trouble
113 comments / September 13, 2010
Let’s face it, it hasn’t been a remarkable trading year so far. Trading is thin, and margins are decreasing. Van der Moolen spin-off Alphabay is the first victim going down and liquidating their positions. Apparently the start-up by VDM managers burned trough their cash in less than a year. Too many managers and support staff, and a lack of cash earners – is the common judgement according to insiders. The irony is Alphabay is auctioning their derivative positions, after it bought the VDM derivative positions against a huge discount in a messy situation. Sad news for the involved employees.
Bye bye Egbert! Let’s go skiing…..
Strange, noticed that they just hired a director according to linke din or the guy is updating his profile at a very ockward time. Not something to be proud of, if you ask me.
http://nl.linkedin.com/pub/jaap-harteveld/21/380/657
Anybody that can confirm the article above? Too bad if true(yes i really had a positive experience with egbert). What about that other rumor Webb Traders, are they going down and who are those guys?
Jaap Harteveld is a good guy, used to be on the trading floor with Transpan. I think he was at Alphabay since the beginning.
Regarding the Alphabay ‘news’, if true it’s very sad. Same goes for WEBB Traders.
Very sad. Especially for Fop and Franz.
What about the other 6 dwarfs? Any good/bad/indifferent news about them? Amazing that Alphabay burned EUR 2.5mio so fast. Only the great ones can do that.
How come people are feeling sorry for Egbert all of a sudden, but not for me? I’m still unemployed!
Egbert / Alphabay stole 3.5 million (not 2.5 as reported) from VDM, with the help of the liquidators who had no clue. A substantial part of the options portfolio they took over expired less than a week after the transaction with VDM, allowing Alphabay to lock in a substantial part of the discount. A year later they are getting rid of the remainder of their portfolio. There is no point in keeping their shitty company afloat for years to trade out of Dec 2015 options (not to mention that Egbert probably would loose money every year provided he is in charge!), much better to auction them off – this time the discount will be a lot smaller. I hope the VDM creditors – and liquidators – are paying close attention.
Fashion Victim
Who are Fop and Franz?
But is this story true? What is the source? Fop = Foppe
A bad company with bad traders will never amaze me at their ability to lose money. If they had made money, then I would have been amazed.
lange l#l wou zo graag die vdm posities overnemen voor 3.6 mln € dat hij vergat dat goed te regelen met de curator. nu staat dat geld geblokkeerd op een rekening bij KBC. het afbouwen van de posities (dec09, mar10, jun10) heeft 3 mln € gekost. goed gedaan foppe. de overhead was 250 k per maand x 12 maanden. waarschijnlijk wil buddy AJ ( waar lange l#l wel 6x gesolliciteerd heeft) zijn 5 mln € 10 % lening na een jaar terug, die hij goed kan gebruiken om zijn eigen tent overeind te houden….
Thanks for all the inside information Giliano. Maybe not that smart to post under your real name, on the other hand I don’t think anyone at IMC really cares.
Isn’t it time the Alphabay website gets updated? Or are the really expanding? Moewaha!
He Giliano – hoe is ‘t? Ik dacht dat lange l#l “slechts” over een kwart miljoen aan het bakkeleien is met de curator? Het grootste deel van de discount is wel bij Alphabay terecht gekomen (ten laste van de schuldeisers van VDM).
er is een dispuut met de curatoren van 250k € omdat foppe op de laatste dag de posities tegen de curatoren in heeft gemarked en een dispuut van 3.6 mln € met de clearing, omdat die vinden dat ze nog 10 mln € tegoed hebben van vdm. die claim is overigens contant gemaakt bij zijn buddy FV.
Alle misere bij de bedrijfjes die zijn voortgekomen uit VDM en Curvalue onderstreept dat er maar een goede manager rondliep.
Ondergetekende.
PS Ik wil wel weer eens aan de bak … de hele dag op de kinderen passen en amsterdamtrader lezen gaat vroeg of laat ook vervelen!
Dat kan KBC wel willen, maar de lening is verstrekt door KBC Bank in Brussel, niet door KBC Clearing in Amsterdam. Kunnen ze dus niet tegen elkaar wegstrepen (hoe graag ze dat ook zouden willen).
Hoe bedoel je dat “de claim contact is gemaakt bij FV”?
Overigens is de winst bij buddy FV post-VDM (2009 en later) helemaal ingestort (en de winst – en bonussen! – over 2008 moesten navenant worden gecorrigeerd). Frankie heeft z’n kantoren in het buitenland gesloten wegens “veranderde omstandigheden op het politieke vlak” (in gewone mensentaal: mazen in de belastingwetgeving zijn gedicht, het spelletje is uit). Had ie maar een betere manager als Onno moeten aannemen 🙂
is anyone surprised….
Jammer Smegbert! Is het geld toch weer Wegbert! Wat een pechbert.
Fantastic! More IT equipment to steal….
they were not running any big position .. u cant loose 2.5mil like that .. egbert is bullshitting so that people dont think he got away stealing 2.5 mil from VDM shareholders.. good old diversion so that the money can now neatly be taken out of alphabay’s clearing bank .. quite a neat plan i say ..
they didn’t hire any director muppet .. he’s the original partner and was the MO head back in VDM .. Egbert, Jaap and Rick were the ones marking, valuing, making a bid and deciding the auction .. so they sneakily stole 3.5mil discount for themselves… and he’s the one who runs the div stripping .. well atleast govt tax teams are less motivated than private VDM shareholders .. so its okay to steal till the going is good ..
forgot.. u are a muppet .. so we definitely shouldnt take ur half-baked opinion abt Egbert ..
i dont understand how this is a sad news .. they stole 3.5mil discount .. burnt/wasted 1 mil trying to monetise it and now they have cashed out .. if Caerus went down, that be quite sad because that was the real entrepreneurial and smart team who put in their own hard earned cash on line and have tried running an honest venture ..
i wudnt be surprised if webb closed up too .. if the auction/fixing stopped generating free cash, what are u going to do sitting on ur ass or playing fussball ..
I personally taught the guys at Webb everything there is to know about using the crossbook, so I would be very, very surprised if Webb has to close down. Their future has never been brighter. Maybe my old friend Marco can offer me a job? Marco, are you listening?? I’m so eager to show the trading community my improved Blackberry skills not to mention the latest fashion.
not much loss about Alphabay given the dealings that surrounded the old VDM positions…all very dodgy indeed
What a coincidence : on the day Alphabay goes down, I receive my bonus over 2009 as former trader for Curvalue/VDM! Hurray!
(receive = official confirmation)
well last anonymous aka Hans Corsten. hope you’re happy with getting only half of what was left after the curators burnt all the cash.
Well, that’s all amazing news. The guys at Alphabay confirmed that this will be the last month. Rick Smit (MD and former risk mgr of VDM) is looking for a new job and hiding in Spain, Jaap Hartefeld (mentioned above) is also looking for a new job asap (hence updated his LinkedIn profile), their IT manager is gone (Paul Snoep) so it’s a matter of days.
Also, rumour has it that Egbert and, to a certain extent, Rick and Jaap are in the process of pocketing a nice sum each because of the demise of Alphabay. Of course we all hope that the former VDM employees that have participating in this vehicle for former VDM managers short on serious cash have been this smart as using their extended run at VDM, part 2 as a period of paid time for applications by real-world companies.
Caerus is doing OK as they are a bunch of old-school traders trying to get a break in this post-open outcry millennium by earning their salaries by scraping together the crumbs and leftovers left by serious trading companies by hard work on just a few computers connected to just one exchange.
The Webb Traders firm is going nowhere fast as this is too a bunch of old-schoolers trying to scrape a few bucks with some luck. It’s headed by the rich and kind ex-VDM manager Marco van den Berg, who happened to grab just a nice sum of money from VDM as severance payment after being fired because of mismanagement (sic!) just a few months before VDM died of… mismanagement. The also fired former risk manager Thijs Booij (he was fired because of huge risk mgt failures (sic again!) and replaced by Rick Smit at VDM. He did only get a tiny severance package).
The rest is trying their luck at IMC and AllOptions as Optiver is wisely not trying to get involved with the former VDM people.
That’s it for now. More news at http://www.fd.nl
precisely.. employees at Alphabay should have known that this shit was coming .. why wud u feel bad abt foppe and fraz .. if u are going to be stupid enuf to believe in alphabay/egbert, well then that cud be dangerous for their health surely ..
does this kill the romantic idea that all traders have to start up their own shop? without the capital it just doesnt work
Starting capital was not the bottleneck here at all.
how much did they have day 1?
Was there any intention whatsoever to create a trading form or was the only objective of alphabay to unwind the vdm position?
Egbert’s ego probably got in the way – if he only wanted to unwind the positions he should not have taken so many people on board. Because it was clear they wouldn’t add a dime to the P&L (Rick Smit, Castelijn & Castelijn, Foppe, Jaap H, etc.)
I can’t believe it was just a get the money out of the VDM positions and leave scam. You just don’t hire traders to do that. Curious about the Alphabay spinoffs though, if they continue this way there will be more trading companies then traders in a couple of years.
Feel sorry for Bob.
Of course it wasnt just about getting money out of the VDM positions .. how stupid can u be ?
There was 2 aspects to it .. first there was 3.5mil to be stolen from VDM shareholders .. so that was done close to bankruptcy ..
then Egbert & co having no idea on how a trading firm is run, thought that they might actually be able to use this money to build a new successful trading firm like Flow traders/Tibra .. of course incompetency prevailed soon and the new venture went nowhere .. and there lies in the sweet contigency plan .. after burning half or one mil unwinding the positions, they could easily cash out .. so thats how they bought a call option on a trading company from VDM shareholders and got paid rather handsomely to buy the fucking call option!
so now i understand why its better to be lucky than smart as an option trader.. this is the derivatives trade of the decade ..
to have a 2.5/3 million headstart and not be able to make a go of the company is pretty pathetic…they may have had the genuine intention of making it into a viable entreprise but 9 months in they were making no progress and decided to cash out…where to now for Egbert??
well said mate…but I’d like to add that it’s better to be lucky than smart in life in general, not just as an option trader
of course its better to be lucky anywhere in life .. but being lucky as a trader is rather important and can be rather lucrative just because they are always exposed to risk .. both down and upside .. normal people are usually not exposed on downside or upside to be honest.. being lucky for them is limited to say winning a lottery, thats just black swan, 6 sigma event .. for option traders dealing with 1 sigma events day in day out, being lucky is heaven sent gift !
Eggberts remarsk are also funny: “we will not be the only company that will cease to exist”
Look at him, trying to distract people from his incompetency and fraudulence
IMC are not getting involved with VDM people full stop. The good guys left a long long time ago…
From what I hear, the good guys certainly left IMC a LONG time ago!
robert van duivenbode was one of the last good traders at vdm … he left 3 years ago … i knew then the company would sink
Jobi didn’t go to Alphabay did he? Is he working at Web traders?
whats jobi’s actual name ?
Jobi is his real name … “in between jobs” I believe
i make my own luck, the more i trade the luckier i get 😉
u cant trade more if there arent limit orders lying around .. moron .. who are u going to trade against otherwise .. keep praying dumb retail and institutional doesnt leave the market all together from this punting & “customized risk and management/exposure” bullshit ..
obviously you’re not a golfer
Joby is trading in Koln, Germany for the local VDM spinoff.
Robert v. Duivenbode a good trader? Yeah right. In the really old Hoekman days it was easy money. As a prop trader he was the one who lost the most (and management just let him get aqway with it; which itself is quite an achievement considering he was playing games, looking for new watches and boating websites).
FOPPE?
Die gast (ene Michel…. Lebelle?) die zegt dat Robert van Duivenbode de laatste goede VDM handelaar was?!?! Volgens mij ben je niet goed snik. Een blinde kon gvd zien dat die kerel te stom was om zelf te poepen. Mijn hemel zeg. Hij was degene die VDM van de wal in de sloot hielp al in 2003/2004!!!
Jobi was in Cologne only for a month.
Vergeet niet dat Duif ook druk was met het downloaden van rintones! Dit alles onder mijn beschermend oog.
Sjakie, Michel is vast niet lebelle. Die gaat echt geen comment in het Engels posten
is jobi weer terug in nl ??? die gozer kan ook helemaal niks, hij zat bij de meest succesvolle start-up van vdm, geld voor het oprapen met die big swinging dick casper
ik wist niet beter dan dat jobi na het vdm faillissement al terug was in a’dam, zag m regelmatig in de stad … was ervanuit gegaan dat ie bij zn vrienden van WEBB zat te klikken
why all this negativity???
Let’s just smell the flowers and give kusjes to each other!!!
Well said PAPEETE!!!
What has this site to do with traders ? There is not a single trader on this site . Only hasbeens and old farts . Who are by the way too chicken to post a comment under their own name . Guys get a life accept that the old days are over and that you’re history . All this pathetic talk about VDM . What is it to you ? Stop whining and start making some money .If you can if not get a job , get a life .
all the sweet talking morons … kindly stop preaching and get out of this fucking website if its bothering u .. it shud be fucking obv to u that its a free open blog meant for whatever fucking discussion .. u guys can go kiss each other if its too fucking negative for ur taste .. capiche ..
paul don’t ever come to me asking for a job
Egbert, took all the (overhead) guys with him from VDM, because they were all involved in the deal of taking over the positions against a 3m discount.
Rick Smit was the risk manager and signed off on the valuation towards KBC and curator.
Partners in crime !!
heeft Rick Smit echt de boel zo opgelicht…..?????
Vertrouw nooit Rick Smit of z’n broer Peter-Paul.
Peter Paul wordt volgens mij nog steeds gezocht door de Spaanse Guardia Civil.
what is “capiche”???some fish from the pacific?
you made that up?
The positions of Alphabay have been sold yesterday. But to which of the 3 market makers? And which disount this time? 200.000? 50.000?
Alphabay is expanding. We are currently looking for experienced traders and IT staff. Check http://www.alphabay.nl
hey…anyone of you guys busy with trading??
anyone wants to sell me a TPG DEC10 35 syntetic???I pay good…14,80 eurotjes!!!
I am there…hit me!!
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capiche
capiche?
caprice!
http://www.littlecaprice.com
Re: http://www.alphabay.nl
At one point of time in their hubris, they were looking to pay ‘000s of euro to get website/logo designed by professionals .. what a joke .. clearly they the lessons of VDM were lost on them ..
The positions of Alphabay have been sold to Liquid
So Dr Frank can work his magic again on his old positions?
lets start a new firm, lets buy an existing company too expensive, lets hire 4 backoffice guys, 1 riskmanager,1 senior trader, 3 developers, 4 it guys, 1 cfo, 1 ceo, 1 secretary….
lets pays them all 10 k € a months, hire a big office, have an overhead of 250 k a month.
“thats not bad, thats of 1/4 of vdm”
“but dont we need traders”
“no traders are only a pain in the ass, always complaining about overhead, bonuses and salary . Ok lets hire 1 trader to trade out the positions”
“what about memberships ?”
” we dont need that, we can secretly use the aespen connections “
Re: lets start a new firm, lets buy an existing company too expensive, lets hire 4 backoffice guys, 1 riskmanager,1 senior trader, 3 developers, 4 it guys, 1 cfo, 1 ceo, 1 secretary….
lets pays them all 10 k € a months, hire a big office, have an overhead of 250 k a month.
what bullshit r u talking abt ? nothing close to what Alphabay was ..
Deeply deeply shame yourself Egbert !
Alphabay is a member of Euronext, Xetra and Eurex, Aespen is not … do you mean Aespen used Alphabay’s exchange connections instead?
he pulled off the trade of the year .. whats there to be ashamed off ?
zeg kerels, even een vraagje. is het toeval dat vrijwel alle toenmalige vdm bestuurders weer of nog steeds werkloos thuis zitten ? kunnen rdd, egbert, onno, rick, frank vdl, lenny, linda m niet ergens een absurd groot kantoor huren en dan de hele dag brainstormen hoe ze binnen 3 jaar tot de top 3 trader firmas in de wereld horen, tussendoor nog even binck inhalen, dividendbelasting in andorra, monaco, san marino en ijsland kunnen strippen en spreadbetting in engeland kunnen aanbieden ?
was amsterdamtrader.com banned at Alphabay trading floor ?
He Casper – count me in! Ik sta te popelen om weer aan de slag te gaan. Ik heb in de tussentijd zoveel ideeen gekregen, ik krijg er bijna hoofdpijn van. Heb je m’n telefoonnummer nog?
Nee, dan de kapitale panden aan de Keizergracht uit de tijd van Rondeltap. Voor minder dan een dozijn handelaren, twee gymzalen, een biljartzaal etcetera. Vervolgens 80 miljoen dollar dokken aan de SEC en als klap op de vuurpijl Curvalue overnemen en Den Drijver als paard van Troje binnenhalen!
Alphabay had a trading floor ??
if u were friends with egbert, he wud have taken u for a tour of it ..
Bij Alphabay hebben ze eerst gehandeld vanaf de VDM locatie op Schiphol. Daarna zijn ze verhuisd naar de Singel, op schoot bij Aespen. Voor de inventaris van anderhalve ton euro, die ze van VDM hebben overgenomen, hebben ze nooit betaald. Die rekening staat nog open bij de curatoren. Kennelijk was 3.5 miljoen niet genoeg.
man if u already stole the discount on the derivative positions, why stop at there .. physicals were obv target .. too bad they cudnt take one of the cars with them … that be too obv .. gives u an opportunity to catch egbert pedalling around town ..
Deeply deeply deeply shame yourself Egbert !
u need to be sightly more original than adding another ‘shame’ to ur previous comment .. come on ..
To anon: yeah they were members of those exchanges, but that doesn’t mean they were trading under their own IDs (they did not set up their infrastructure) … in fact, I told you how they solved this conundrum.
stop bullshitting dude .. they were trading under their own name ..
I’m sorry, but byebye is actually correct.
that when egbert was trading, he wasnt using his own trader key ?? thats load of bullshit .. exchanges have rules that u cant trader with somebody’s else’s id/name ..
Jeroen from Alphabay – wasn’t he from Curvalue and DTA in the first place?
Do not be so naïve. How does the exchange know which person is pushing the buttons. Via a webcam ???
ofcourse u can break exchanges rules .. traders do it on adhoc bases going for lunch break n stuff .. but a company wudnt do it on purpose .. its really big operational risk .. i think exchange had fined optiver millions for some shit like that .. also what were marc and paul doing there anyways if they cudnt even sort of trader keys .. they were certainly not management ..
Well, also interesting is the ‘conspiracy theory’ on how VDM died.
Of course it is not because of mismanagement by Richard den Drijver and stealing and nepotism by Hans Kroon… no, it’s all the fault of…. Peter Swart!
Sources around Hans Kroon as Hans Kroon himself, Richard den Drijver and Frank van der Linden are all spreading this ‘conspiracy theory’. Friends of Hans tried to straighten it out between Peter Swart and Hans Kroon in offering their mediation services but Hans Kroon declined their offer and persisted in this ‘conspiracy theory’.
Oddly enough, only Hans, Richard and Frank are believers and they will have a hard time answering the “Ondernemerskamer” legal steps. Fortunately, this bunch never put too much in writing to leave traces. Unfortunately, they have pissed off a former US VDM employee who kept record of all BlackBerry mail of Richard den Drijver which ran through his US and UK account. Hopefully this American (apparently working for Flow Traders these days) can find the “Ondernemerskamer” legal team in time. The “Ondernemerskamer” has started their hearings, by the way.
What’s more to say? Richard apparently lives in Morocco these days, as this linkedIn entry of his son Morad shows: http://ma.linkedin.com/pub/morad-den-drijver/24/4b8/6b1
Bye, bye to Switzerland and expensive boarding schools.
As I said; More news at http://www.fd.nl
Also interesting is the ‘conspiracy theory’ on how VDM died.
Of course it is not because of mismanagement by Richard den Drijver and stealing and nepotism by Hans Kroon… no, it’s all the fault of…. Peter Swart!
Sources around Hans Kroon as Hans Kroon himself, Richard den Drijver and Frank van der Linden are all spreading this ‘conspiracy theory’. Friends of Hans tried to straighten it out between Peter Swart and Hans Kroon in offering their mediation services but Hans Kroon declined their offer and persisted in this ‘conspiracy theory’.
Oddly enough, only Hans, Richard and Frank are believers and they will have a hard time answering the “Ondernemerskamer” legal steps. Fortunately, this bunch never put too much in writing to leave traces. Unfortunately, they have pissed off a former US VDM employee who kept record of all BlackBerry mail of Richard den Drijver which ran through his US and UK account. Hopefully this American (apparently working for Flow Traders these days) can find the “Ondernemerskamer” legal team in time. The “Ondernemerskamer” has started their hearings, by the way.
What’s more to say? Richard apparently lives in Morocco these days, as this linkedIn entry of his son Morad shows: http://ma.linkedin.com/pub/morad-den-drijver/24/4b8/6b1
Bye, bye to Switzerland and expensive boarding schools.
Nee hoor, Richard den Drijver is een zwerver these days; check zijn emailaccount op gmail maar eens; richard.monaco123@gmail.com. Zijn password is te raden ;).
Let maar weer eens op de leuke spelfouten… 😉
From: Richard Den Drijver [mailto:richard.monaco123@gmail.com]
Re: VDM/Kroon
Beste,
Lees net je mail. Ben momenteel met family buiten Europa in andere
tijdzones. We hebben als family afscheidt van Zwitserland en mijn
zoon’s school genomen.
Als ondernemer ben ik nieuwe uitdagingen aangegaan, gewoon veel
leuker en mijn zoon is nog jong zo nu kan het nog.
Ik help je graag doch heb met Sidney /L&L afgesproken dat alles via
hun gaat ook ivm verzekering AIG. Je zult begrijpen dat ik deze
afspraak moet respecteren.
Gezien ons uitdagende reis schema gebruik ik vaak pre pay en zodra
we een vast keuze hebben gemaakt waar te settelen geef ik je al
mijn details door.
Als je in de tussentijd vragen hebt gaarne via Sidney.
Mvg
Richard
Woont hij in Sidney, Australië?
Nee, Sidney is de advocaat.
Ah. OK.
En wat is het password dan? VDM?
Zijn mail zegt ‘monaco’ logeert hij bij Hans Kroon misschien?
Follow Morad on Twitter
http://twitter.com/Loonygoonywoony
and Hans Kroon on Plaxo:
http://www.plaxo.com/directory/profile/25770428102/ef3b3b5c/hans/Kroon
Hans has updated his new phone number (00377607936759) and writes:
“hans Kroon is druk bezig met het adviseren van VDM cq AVALON.Maar hoop gauw weer naar Monaco terug te gaan. Sep 7, 2008.”
Kroon’s lawyer of course later denied that Hans had any involvement in Avalon. Sure.
PS How many people put “MULO” as an *accomplishment* on their resume? (and did he actually graduate from the MULO … ?!)
PPS Trader Jack, perhaps you want to call Hans for an exclusive interview and finally get his views on the VDM bankruptcy.
his house is fore sale. 15k sfr /m2
http://www.immostreet.ch/de/ItemDetails/Campaign/77b6eebe-ef15-4bc3-8e33-781b3729c947?item=31&ReturnAZM=%2fde%2fAdZone%2fLookup%2f7cb30522-90eb-44f9-b818-f1da8a2a2592
sorry for sale….must have been mistaken with foreclosure
http://www.nu.nl/binnenland/2335208/man-met-miljoenenschuld-opgepakt.html
RDD, is that you? thought you were younger despite your looks…
Iedereen die wat te vertellen heeft inzake VDM:
Allen en Overy is zaakvoerder namens de OK.
contactgegevens:
Judith Smaling
Advocaat
Allen & Overy LLP
http://www.allenovery.com
Apollolaan 15
1077 AB Amsterdam
Postbus 75440
1077 AK Amsterdam
Direct 020 674 1115
Tel 020 674 1000
Fax 020 674 1816
so how manny WOCU has WEBB Traders made this yaer? 1? 2? 3?? will they be around next year?? or will Marco come looking for ME again??
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9318176&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&autoplay=1
(risk mgr Thijs is 25 seconds into the video)
Wat doen Egbert, Onno, fop, rik en al die gasten nu eigenlijk?
i dont think anyone can ever trust Mr Alphabert ..