“Easy Prey Investors” Author Al Rosen Featured in the New York Times

Warren Buffett Invests in Canada, but Should You?
By Gretchen Morgenson

When Warren Buffett acts, investors notice. And after he took a roughly $300 million position last month in Home Capital Group, a troubled Canadian mortgage underwriter, some investors saw it as a vote of confidence not only in that company, but also in Canadian stocks over all.

Al Rosen takes a different view. A veteran forensic accountant and independent equity analyst who predicted the collapse of Nortel Networks, the Canadian telecom company, two years before its 2009 demise, Mr. Rosen has a message for people investing in Canadian stocks: be wary.

It is a mystery to Mr. Rosen why Mr. Buffett bought into Home Capital Group, a company that has been the subject of a titanic battle between the investors who believe in the company and other investors — short sellers — who do not. Certainly, Mr. Buffett expects to make money on his deal. But in an interview, Mr. Rosen said he thought there was more to the story than the markets yet know.  Read full feature > 

Easy Prey Investors
Why Broken Safety Nets Threaten Your Wealth

By Al Rosen and Mark Rosen

How obsolete court decisions, lawmaker inaction, and conflicted self-regulators are facilitating the theft of wealth and retirement savings in Canada.

Over the past twenty-five years, a series of actions, omissions, and failures by Canada’s lawmakers and the purported gatekeepers of investors’ rights have left Canadians’ investments, pensions, and retirement savings at greater risk. Bodies such as provincial securities commissions have abandoned their obligations to safeguard investors and allowed published and audited financial statements in Canada to become unreliable. Yet these distorted financial statements are often used by financial analysts who present them as accurate, leaving investors in the dark about serious risks and negative impacts on their savings. Read more >