Fishback Admits Sharing Portfolio Data From Einhorn’s Greenlight

(Bloomberg) -- James Fishback, a former analyst at David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital Inc., admitted sharing confidential information and agreed to pay the hedge fund’s costs to resolve a lawsuit it filed against him.

According to an agreement filed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, Fishback, who worked at Greenlight between 2021 and 2023, said he violated the terms of his employment by sending to a personal email account summaries of the fund’s positions and strategies as well as a document showing its entire portfolio. 

He acknowledged sharing that information with others on dozens of occasions. Fishback, who went on to found Azoria Capital, said he would return or delete any Greenlight information in his possession within five business days. He also agreed to pay Greenlight’s legal fees and costs stemming from the suit, though the exact amount remains to be determined.

A spokesperson for Greenlight declined to comment. In a statement, Fishback said Greenlight found only a few dozen texts and emails out of 100,000 in which he said he was just “speaking about my work with friends and family.” He said there was “nothing damaging” about his conduct and called Greenlight’s suit “frivolous from the get-go.” 

Greenlight sued Fishback last year, originally alleging defamation as well as breach of contract over the former analyst’s claim that he had been the fund’s “head of macro.” Such a position doesn’t exist and, if it did, would belong to Einhorn, the fund said. 

Fishback brought his own defamation suit against Greenlight in 2023 for allegedly telling a family office that he was never head of macro. The parties agreed in early 2024 to discontinue the defamation litigation and arbitrate those claims. Both sides declined to comment on the status of those proceedings on Friday.

Greenlight also sued Fishback earlier in 2024 to recover on two promissory notes the firm held against him. A judge ordered him to pay more than $228,000 in that case in March.

The dispute between Greenlight and Fishback first played out on social media, where it inspired numerous “head of macro” memes that became popular in the hedge fund community. 

Fishback has recently attracted more attention for his full-throated support of President Donald Trump, particularly his efforts to assert greater control over the Federal Reserve. 

Over the summer, Azoria unsuccessfully sued for public access to the July 29 Federal Open Market Committee meeting, claiming transparency was needed because it believed Fed “Chair Jerome Powell, is maintaining high interest rates to undermine President Donald J. Trump and his economic agenda.”

Fishback also yelled repeatedly at Fed Governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump is seeking to remove from office, at the central bank’s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The case is Greenlight Capital Inc. v James T. Fishback, 24-cv-4832, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

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