By Carleton English
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So-called pharma bro Martin Shkreli was making enemies on Wall Street well before his drug-price-hiking infamy, according to a book out this month.
In “Confessions of a Wall Street Insider,” convicted inside trader Michael Kimelman describes meeting Shkreli in late 2008. Shkreli, a 25-year-old biotech trader at the time, was just as brash then as when he infamously hiked the price of Daraprim 5,000% to $750 per tablet in September 2015.
More: An expanded version of this report appears at NYPost.com
Shkreli was tied to Royal Bank of Canada at the time and was called in to vet the trading prowess of Franz Tudor, one of Kimelman’s colleagues at the now-closed hedge fund Incremental Capital, according to the new book. Despite having nearly 10 years on Shkreli, Tudor was torn apart by Shkreli’s rapid-fire questioning and “psychopathic level of statistical recall and brain power,” Kimelman writes.
Kimelman eventually intervened to slow the bloodletting and give his colleague a break. Despite Shkreli’s seeming victory that day, his fortunes soon changed. RBC /zigman2/quotes/200638870/delayed CA:RY -1.38% fired Shkreli months later after some of his trades cost the firm millions, Kimelman writes.
Then, of course, Shkreli was arrested and charged with securities fraud in late 2015. Kimelman predicts that if Shkreli is convicted, he will be sentenced to 10 years, he told the New York Post’s On the Money column.
Kimelman, meanwhile, served nearly two years in federal prison for insider trading, and his colleague Tudor, who wore a wire to tape colleagues’ conversations, got three years probation.
Shkreli did not respond to requests for comment, according to the New York Post.
January 2017: Twitter suspends Shkreli’s account over alleged harassment of journalist
December 2016: Martin Shkreli just outed the guy behind this anonymous Twitter account
August 2016: Martin Shkreli should know better than to heckle a comedian on social media
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