Revision as of 19:22, 19 December 2005
Business History
Mr. Omar S. Amanat most recently was the Founder, CEO and majority shareholder of Tradescape Corp, a next generation brokerage and technology firm for professional investors, which he founded in 1997 and sold to E*Trade Financial in 2002 becoming one of E*Trade's largest shareholders. Prior to forming Tradescape, Mr. Amanat co-founded CyberBlock, the predecessor of CyberTrader, Inc., which was acquired by Charles Schwab in February 2000. Mr. Amanat is the recipient of the prestigious Albert P. Einstein Technology award for outstanding corporate citizenship and sits on the Board of Trustees for the Harlem Youth Development Foundation. He has been profiled in various media venues including Fortune Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and is a frequent public speaker. Mr. Amanat attended the University of Pennsylvania and the top-ranked Wharton School of Business and he currently sits on the Board of Advisors for Wharton's Entrepreneurial Council.
E*Trade Lawsuit
Recently, he has been at the center of major controversy as E*Trade filed a suit against his holding company. E*Trade Financial Corp. brought a lawsuit alleging that it was defrauded when it purchased online trading company Tradescape.com for about $280 million in stock in 2002. The lawsuit says the principals of now-defunct MarketXT Holdings Corp. "concealed declining trading volume and revenues for Tradescape and artificially pumped up its balance sheet with false assets. Manhattan-based E*Trade is seeking damages of at least $20 million and punitive damages of at least $100 million.
His personal creditors filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition against him in 2004 and recently, in June 2005 MarketXT also filed for bankruptcy. He, along with his various entities, are the subject of lawsuits from creditors as well as employees who claim to have been defrauded. The controversy also includes other members of the Amanat family who are alleged to have ran Tradescape like a family piggy bank. Omar Amanat's father, Amanat Sharif has been the subject of various lawsuits alleging that he traded Tradescape client accounts without the permission of the clients and suffered losses. Irfan Amanat, Omar Amanat's brother and a former executive at Tradescape recently settled with the SEC over allegations of fraud while he was with the firm that amounted to extracting rebates from a NASDAQ program improperly and with intent. This settlement resulted in the revocation of MarketXT's ability to transact in the securities industry, effectively shutting down the firm.
Amanat's father, Amanat Sharif, was previously associated with healthcare fraud and it has been alleged that Omar Amanat was recently forcibly removed from a high-level position he held with Bridges TV, a new Muslim TV venture after he failed to deliver on promises he made to obtain the position with the firm.