.jpg)
NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) – Lehigh University says it is owed at least $62.5 million from AllianzGI over the investment firm’s allegedly poor response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Lehigh, located in Bethlehem, Pa., says it invested more than $67 million of its total portfolio in two funds offered and managed by AllianzGI. Those funds featured high predictability and low risk, the plaintiff says.
But AllianzGI abandoned that strategy when COVID-19 took its toll on the stock market, Lehigh says in a lawsuit filed Aug. 31.
“AllianzGI also drastically mismanaged the funds in the face of the 2020 market dislocation and the losses occasioned by disregarding its professed strategy,” the suit says.
“Jettisoning its touted market discipline and stop-loss procedures, AllianzGI scrambled to recoup its losses by wagering on the markets’ direction and volatility – precisely what it had promised never to do.
“It guessed wrong as to both, and the combination of its misrepresentations and negligence wiped out more than 75% of Lehigh’s investments in the funds – more than $62 million – during the first quarter of 2020.”