City Taxi Quote

The NYC Taxi King excluded lockets from a hedging funds.

Evgeny "Gene" Freidman's excluded taxi pedals fleets resold Monday at a sealed sale in a Queens, New York resort boutique. The 46 Medaillons - the metallic signs on golden canopies that allowed them to lawfully lift road signs - were all won by a group of people who were found in insolvency law to be MGPE Inc. for a combined $8.56 million, or $186,000 per Medaillon, according to Crain's New York.

MGPE Inc.'s various tenderers are not tracked in legal files, but are part of a hedging pool and are required to rent the Medaillons to naval fleets, according to Crain's and confirmed with an industrial well. New York's taximedallion sector is new ground for hedging investors who may see the recent fall in the price of medaillons as a purchasing option.

Taximedaillons reached a peak of more than a million dollars in 2013, but are often sold today for less than half of that amount. For more than eight years, Matthew Daus was Director of the Taxi and Limousine Commission and currently works for Windels Marx Attorneys at Law, which has customers in the taxi and limousine industries.

Says he sees Hedge fund companies as a rarity in the taxi world. "While I was in charge of the TLC, we addressed target groups such as hedge funds," says Daus. "but they didn't want to handle 10-foot rod locket at the time." MGPE Inc. placed an opening offer for 7.7 million dollars or 167,500 dollars per medal the previous weekend.

One group offered the prize on the date of the sale and placed a $175,000 per locket for all 46 lockets before MGPE Inc. responded with a win of $186,000 per locket. And there were also tenderers willing to rise above $186,000, but only for single lockets. MGPE Inc.'s mass tender to Crain's was selected by the bidder and reviewed by an industrial well.

It is not anticipated that the medal prize of 186,000 dollars will become the new standard for prospective medal sales, Daus said. "As part of Freidman's insolvency, these lockets were ruled out," says Daus.