Asset Alliance IPO Nixed (Again)

Bruce Lipnick’s latest attempt to unload stock in Asset Alliance Corp, his accident-prone alternative investment manager roll-up, is over.

Tailwind Financial Inc (“Tailwind”) (AMEX: TNF), a blank check development stage company, and Asset Alliance Corporation (“Asset Alliance”), a Delaware corporation, today jointly announced that they have terminated the Agreement and Plan of Merger between Tailwind and Asset Alliance dated January 8, 2008...The decision to terminate was based on the belief that the transaction would not receive shareholder approval due to market conditions in the financial services sector...Asset Alliance will seek other sources of capital to expand its manager acquisition and manager seeding business...

No dummies those TNF shareholders. They’d rather get their money back than sink it without a trace in a business that has, despite the global hedge fund surge, managed to achieve, at best, zero asset growth over the last five years or so.

Several things:

• Accident-prone? Asset Alliance’s record includes holdings in Beacon Hill Asset Management, Jack Barry’s crooked fixed income hedge fund business (d. 2002), and Liberty Corner, an affiliate of a fund best known for d/b/a Phil Bennett’s Favorite Secret Refco Receivables Parking Lot. (Asset Alliance said that the Liberty Corner entity that handled Phil’s round-trips had nothing to do with the Liberty Corner in which it bought an undisclosed equity stake in 2000. Your mileage may vary. Suffice to say that Liberty Corner is no longer numbered among Asset Alliance’s affiliated managers.)
• Again? Unlike the Asset Alliance website, which is regularly scrubbed to eliminate evidence of red-face inducing floppage, the US Securities and Exchange Commission still has a copy of the 1998 S1 registration statement.
• Oh, and here’s an oldie but a goody. For auld time’s sake.
• Ooops, nearly forgot. Another one. Wherein Asset Alliance agreed to fork over $2.5 million for its contribution to the Beacon Hill mess.
• Beacon Hill, 2002; Liberty Corner, 2005, Blown IPO, 2008. Anyone else see a pattern here that doesn’t bode well for 2011?