One casualty of the Vision Capital fiasco is Harvard Business School. As the SEC steps up its probe of the once-hot hedge fund and as investors press lawsuits, Reuters details how one of its founders, Randolph "Randy" Cohen, played up his status as an associate professor at Harvard Business School. That cachet helped the fund attract early money from other big investors.

"People familiar with Vision said Cohen's Harvard pedigree was particularly important because institutional investors tend to shy away from funds like Vision which specialize in PIPEs, or private investments in public companies," said the article.

Even with a little more than $600 million in assets under management, Vision remains one the largest PIPE funds. Cohen, is now a visiting professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. It remains to be seen how the PIPEs sector will be affected by this. Even before the probe came to light, the bloom was off the rose.

The economy has been tough on all fledgling companies. Perhaps not even a Harvard professor could spin gold from these sorts of portfolios. The real issues revolve around portfolio valuations. It will be interesting to see how Vision approached things. The firm says it is cooperating with the probe.

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