Coward slapped down… again!

* IKOS founder’s ex admits to copying secret files *

BY PETROS MAVROS

The estranged husband of the founder of one of Europe’s biggest hedge funds has admitted to secretly copying the company’s unique trading software, a London court has heard.
Martin Coward confessed for the first time that he downloaded the software while still employed at Cyprus-based IKOS, prior to his acrimonious departure from the firm.
Coward and estranged wife Elena Ambrosiadou became multi-millionaires when they used the bespoke and complex mathematical computer software – the company’s trading ‘Black Box’ to form the heart of IKOS’ 2.4 billion-pound operations to complete trades for investors.
After their relationship broke down and Coward had left the company, he went on to try and set up a rival hedge fund business in Monaco.
Ambrosiadou, who controls IKOS with operations in Limassol and five other international financial centres, long suspected Coward had taken a copy of the software to help build his new trading programme.
In legal papers it was revealed that he finally admitted taking a copy and then uploaded it to a computer cloud.
For nine months he claimed he had forgotten the password, while a copy was later given to his solicitors for safekeeping.
Admissions came during legal proceedings at the London High Court, where IKOS alleged Coward’s solicitors — Hogan Lovells International LLP — had consistently refused to say if they had a copy infringing an injunction.
Hogan Lovells countered to get the action struck out claiming it was without merit but abandoned it without explanation just days before the hearing was due to take place. It offered to pay IKOS’ standard legal costs.
Whether IKOS should be granted indemnity costs, Mr Justice Mann said it was only in September of this year that Martin Coward “really admitted copying some of the software and that software was held by Dr Coward’s solicitors.”
He added “there was an element of culpable game playing” and a “poverty of reasoning” in Hogan and Lovells’ statements. IKOS’s barrister Charles Hollander QC had accused a senior partner at the law firm, Adam Cooke, of being very “careful“ in responding to the repeated question whether the firm held a copy.
He said: “I am not suggesting he lied or said anything deliberately misleading.”
“It’s game playing of the worse kind.”
He told the court Coward’s late admission was part of the on-going legal battles between himself and Ambrosiadou and “Dr Coward has this history of bringing, publicising and abandoning” claims. “Dr Coward also has ‘previous’ in discontinuing just before the doors of the court, this has to be seen in this context.”
Suspicions that a copy was in circulation were first raised when Hogan Lovells suggested they carry out an audit of the new venture’s system using independent experts to establish if IKOS software had been used.
However the solicitors left unanswered for a long time that they were carrying out the audit without looking at the IKOS software.
Mr Justice Mann refused to award IKOS indemnity costs claiming that although Hogan Lovells’ conduct was “odd,” it was not “improper.”
However, he awarded an interim payment of GBP 55,000 of IKOS’ estimated 80,000 legal fees.
A trial to decide whether Martin Coward infringed IKOS’ copyright is to take place in February 2013 at the earliest.
During the hearing Mr Justice Mann was informed about the legal moves being made across Europe by IKOS which the company said are to protect its business and its investors.
Legal moves include those in Cyprus and Monaco and recently, a judge in Limassol fined Vincent Pfister, a former IKOS research manager, 20,000 euros after he breached injunctions in relation to his downloading of IKOS software.
The court heard how father-of-five Pfister was working “in concert” with Martin Coward in his scheme to use the software to set up a rival hedge fund in Monaco.