Wife’s allegations engulf chief of Barings parent

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Wife’s allegations engulf chief of Barings parent
By James Doran, Wall Street Correspondent



WHEN Claire O’Connell suspected that her husband was having an affair, she set out to denounce him in front of his peers. So, as Robert O’Connell was at a board meeting, she tried to burst in and confront him. She failed, having been intercepted on her way to the meeting room, but she may also have succeeded beyond even her wildest dreams.

Now Baring Asset Management, one of the City’s oldest fund managers, is on the fringe of a very modern investigation in America, amid claims that Mr O’Connell, now the former chief of its parent company, was secretly inflating his personal pension account by more than $30 million with the aid of his alleged lover.

Mr O’Connell, former chief executive of MassMutual Financial Group, Barings’s parent, was dismissed in June as the company accused him of a string of “malfeasances”, including improper share dealing in his company pension account to make a profit of $30 million.

He was also accused of selling to himself a luxury flat owned by the company for substantially less than the market price, of changing company nepotism rules so that he could employ his son, Jared, and his son-in-law and of interfering in a disciplinary action against those family members. It is also alleged that he used the company jet for personal jaunts.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,175-1742786,00.html