Sanjay Valvani

A high-flying hedge fund manager at Visium Asset Management, who was charged last week with insider trading, has died, apparently the victim of a suicide. Sanjay Valvani was discovered on Monday by his wife in their brownstone in Brooklyn Heights, a New York police official said. Mr. Valvani was found face down on the bedroom floor with a cut to his neck, the official said. He left a note, and a knife was found near his body. He was 44. The death brought the government’s case against Mr. Valvani to a shocking end. Last week, he was accused of using confidential information from a former Food and Drug Administration official to reap $32 million in illegal gains. Days after the charges, Visium’s founder, Jacob Gottlieb, announced that he was shuttering the multibillion-dollar hedge fund and selling one of its funds to AllianceBernstein. The son of Indian immigrants, Mr. Valvani grew up in Kalamazoo, Mich. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he spent four years working as a health care consultant before receiving an M.B.A. from Duke University, according to a profile on the school’s website recognizing his endowment of two scholarship funds at the Fuqua School of Business through a $250,000 commitment. Mr. Valvani got his start on Wall Street in 2001 as a pharmaceutical analyst working for Salomon Smith Barney. He then took a job as portfolio manager at the investment management firm Balyasny Asset Management. In addition to his wife, Mr. Valvani left behind two daughters.