Two Companies Report Theft of Investor Data

July 7, 2006 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - BISYS Group Inc. and Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP) have both reported theft of investor data.

According to Bloomberg, BISYS said personal details of 61,000 hedge fund investors were lost when an employee’s truck carrying the files was stolen.Backup tapes with information, including the social security numbers of 35,000 individuals, were being moved June 8 from one facility to another, according to Amy Conti, a BISYS spokeswoman.

Conti declined to name the hedge funds, Bloomberg said. She said police and private investigators believe the tapes have been thrown away. Though BISYS believes the files were not compromised, investors are being notified.

MarketWatch reports a person familiar with the ADP incident said the theft affected around 80 financial institutions and thousands of clients. The company said between November 2005 and February 2006 it provided shareholder lists for “a number of public companies” to someone who fraudulently claimed to be an officer with those companies.

ADP said the shareholder lists included investors’ names, addresses and the numbers of shares they held in certain companies, but not information that would allow access to their accounts, according to MarketWatch.

A spokesman from Fidelity Investments said the information breach affected around 125,000 accounts, while UBS AG reported about 10,000 of its clients were affected. Morgan Stanley said the information of about 3,800 of its clients was disclosed, and Merrill Lynch & Co. did not specify a number. A spokesman from Citigroup Inc.’s Smith Barney unit declined to comment.

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