Visium's Valvani Found Dead in Apparent Suicide: Police

Sanjay Valvani, a hedge fund manager at Visium Asset Management LP who was arrested last week on insider trading charges, has been found dead in an apparent suicide, the police said on Tuesday.

Valvani, 44, was discovered by his wife on Monday evening at his Brooklyn home with a wound to his neck, a New York Police Department spokeswoman said. A suicide note and a knife were recovered, she added.

Valvani was arrested last Wednesday and accused of having fraudulently made $25 million by getting advanced information about U.S. Food and Drug Administration approvals of generic drug applications.

Valvani pleaded not guilty to five counts including securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy and was freed on $5 million bond secured by his home.

The death marked a stunning turn in one of the U.S. government's biggest insider trading cases in years.

Valvani had been a partner at Visium Asset Management and was instrumental in building it with founder Jacob Gottlieb into an $8 billion firm that counted some of the country's biggest pension funds as clients.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York, Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Boston and Sweta Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Jeffrey Benkoe)