I had failed to notice that the link had more than one tab, sorry. :o
But even there, it doesn’t claim what you state. The Cook Islands investments were apparently not the stocks that he gave to Derivium (& whose value was effectively guaranteed at 90%) but rather investments that he made with the 90% cash that Derivium returned to him.
Regardless, the point stands about how the 90% effective floor enabled higher risk & reward investments than would otherwise have been possible.
In addition, on page 4 of your link the defendent’s lawyers alleged that in addition to the 33 profitable loans on which Grayson’s profits/losses totaled $34M, there were 59 other less successful ones.
Bottom line is that he may not have been such a good stock picker after all.
Yeah, that seems to be an unsuccessful attempt to go after Wachovia’s deep pockets, not the $34M case that he won.
In sum, the $34M was for losses, not legal fees, and he presumably did not collect on much of it, if anything.
OTOH, his actual losses (versus failure to profit) appear to have been relatively small.
There is no broader theme to my comments here.