E-M Management hits up investor for cash

Even after his investment partnerships fell apart and stopped paying 1,500 clients their monthly dividend checks, Ed May tried to stay in the game — even going so far as to beseech a former client to put money into a new set of investments.
According to an e-mail obtained by InvestmentNews, Mr. May, who may have raised as much as $300 million over the past several years, made his plea for patience — and more money — in September. That was one month after his firm, E-M Management Investments LLC of Lake Orion, Mich., stopped paying dividends on the private placements.
He sold many of the investments through an independent-contractor representative, Frank Bluestein, who resigned last month from GunnAllen Financial Inc. of Tampa, Fla.
“I am not writing to you to ask for forgiveness nor to get any friendships back, it is too late for that,” Mr. May wrote in an e-mail dated Sept. 4. “I am trying to get some other people to the table who have significant liability in these matters and who have the capacity to at least come close to making everyone whole.”
Mr. May is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Michigan Office of Financial and Insurance Services (InvestmentNews, Oct. 22).
In the e-mail, Mr. May blamed “bad timing” for his clients’ losses, which may potentially add up to millions of dollars.
“If this mess had not arisen for another two months I would have been out of the problem and everyone would have been secure and we would still all be friends,” he wrote. “In life everything is timing and this was bad timing to end a bad scenario.”

For the full report, see the upcoming Oct. 29 issue of InvestmentNews.