"Wall St.’s first big euro casualty; MF Global files bankruptcy case" November 01, 2011|By Daniel Wagner, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Europe’s debt crisis has claimed its first big casualty on Wall Street, a securities firm run by Jon Corzine, former governor of New Jersey.
MF Global Holdings Ltd., which Corzine has headed since early last year, sought bankruptcy protection yesterday.
Concerns about the company’s holdings of European debt caused business partners to pull back last week, leading to a severe cash crunch, the company said in papers filed in US Bankruptcy Court.
Corzine, the former head of the investment banking giant Goldman Sachs Group, oversaw MF Global as it amassed more than $6 billion in debt issued by financially strapped European countries such as Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
Their bonds paid bigger returns than US Treasury debt because bond investors believed they were more likely to default.
That bet eventually doomed the company....
MF Global’s big bet on Europe might not have happened before Corzine’s tenure.
Keep this in mind for later.
Until he joined, the company was known mainly as a dealer in derivatives, investments based on the value of some underlying asset. Corzine wanted to build it into a major investment bank.
One method: trading for the bank’s own profit, a practice known as proprietary trading. Corzine made his career at Goldman as a trader, and the company became a trading powerhouse under his watch....
MF Global has assets of $41.05 billion and liabilities of $39.68 billion.
Then they are not really bankrupt, are they?
It probably ranks as the eighth-biggest US corporate bankruptcy, according to BankruptcyData.com.
Holy s***!
--more--"
"Corzine may be vulnerable in MF Global collapse; Executives already hit by civil lawsuits" November 15, 2011|By Marcy Gordon, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The millions that Jon Corzine amassed as head of Goldman Sachs have become an alluring target for investors who were crushed by the collapse of MF Global, the brokerage firm he led until earlier this month.
And Corzine is not the only one who could be financially vulnerable after the eighth-largest bankruptcy in US history. Others include MF Global’s other top executives; its auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers; and some large Wall Street banks....
They never say which ones, but.... expect another bailout.
No one at MF Global has been charged with a crime or civil violation.
Par for the course in the suites. Locking up the poor, peaceful protesters and charging them with crimes while leeches like Corzine wander around free.
But regulators and the FBI and other criminal investigators are looking into MF Global’s failure, and Corzine hired a prominent white-collar defense lawyer.
Yeah, I have real faith in the government "looking into" anything.
A public relations firm hired by Corzine and a spokeswoman for MF Global declined to comment yesterday. Corzine’s lawyer did not return a call.
It is not clear how much Corzine is worth. He spent roughly $100 million of his fortune to win a US Senate seat and the New Jersey governorship. In 2005, the last full year that he was a senator, he was estimated to be worth $125 million to $175 million.
Corzine’s filings as governor, through 2009, show he held interests in real estate partnerships, investment firms, hedge funds, and private equity funds.
After the MF Global bankruptcy, Corzine declined to take his $12 million severance pay....
How big of him.
MF Global did not list the bet on European debt on its balance sheet for all to see. Instead, those holdings were on the “off-balance sheet,’’ deep in its financial statements. Separate filings with regulators excluded the European debt investment entirely....
We call that LYING 'round these parts!
--more--"
And the mofos were NOT ONLY LIARS but THIEVES!!
"MF Global may have misused client cash" November 18, 2011|By Azam Ahmed and Ben Protess, New York Times
NEW YORK - MF Global improperly diverted customers’ cash for its own use in the days before its bankruptcy, an act that regulators believe may help explain why $600 million of customer funds remains missing, people briefed on the investigation said.
You mean STOLEN, right?
Investigators have now zeroed in on hundreds of millions of dollars in suspect borrowing at the commodities and derivatives brokerage firm, which at the time of its collapse was run by Jon S. Corzine, the former Democratic governor of New Jersey. At least some of that money was used to cover trading losses at MF Global, regulators suspect, meaning the money is no longer simply missing. It is gone.
Related: The Importance of Saving Money
MF Global, like other brokers, can use customer cash if it puts up sufficient collateral. But the firm did not provide enough backing in late October, essentially taking free loans, said the people briefed on the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is continuing.
As customers rushed to withdraw money while the firm was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, that questionable borrowing exacerbated a liquidity crisis at the firm.
It is unclear what MF Global did with all of the money or whether it can be recovered. The firm may have used some of the cash to keep its own lenders at bay, which means the money could be sitting in an account at another firm.
And some of the $600 million may yet materialize. As a patchwork of federal agencies and the trustee overseeing the firm’s liquidation reconstruct MF Global’s books, they expect to find that in the chaotic last days the firm failed to record when some customers received their money.
But a big chunk will probably be much harder to recover, the people said, because it was used to pay off losses, rather than back trades.
The search for the missing money has touched the breadth of the commodities futures business, from Wall Street hedge funds to Midwest farmers. As hundreds of examiners pore over records around the clock, comb through 38,000 customer accounts, and interview former employees, brief moments of hope have emerged, only to be proven false.
An MF Global spokesman declined to comment. Neither the firm nor Corzine have been accused of wrongdoing.
A lawyer for MF Global, Marc E. Kasowitz, said the company and its employees were cooperating with regulators as well as with the trustee.
“Any characterization at this point of what occurred at MF Global is premature and inappropriate,’’ Kasowitz said in a statement.
What do you mean my money is going, you @#%*!!!
The failure of the brokerage firm set off a wave of panic among its tens of thousands of customers. Many of them are farmers and small-business owners, who use these markets to protect themselves from swings in the prices of crops and metals....
Some protection.
MF Global’s customers who acted fast got their money back.
Meaning those that had inside information.
The rest now must wait in line and may never fully recover their funds. Bankruptcy experts doubt the trustee will be able to claw back money secured by clients who rushed out the door....
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And what do you mean the looting, 'er, losses are TWICE THAT?
"$1.2b may be missing for MF Global clients" November 22, 2011|By Michael J. De La Merced, New York Times
NEW YORK - The amount of customer money missing from the collapsed brokerage firm MF Global may be more than $1.2 billion - double previous estimates - the trustee dismantling the firm’s brokerage unit said yesterday.
WTF!!!!!!!!!!!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But the surprise finding, which caught regulators off guard, may be overstated, a person briefed on the investigation said. Some regulators say they believe that the trustee double-counted $220 million that had been transferred between units of MF Global, this person said.
So it's "only" a billion?
Still, the much higher number highlights the disarray of MF Global’s records and raises significantly the hurdle for tens of thousands of customers who are seeking to get their money back....
Un-flipping-f***ing-believable!
It is unclear what was behind MF Global’s original lower estimates.
Not here. F***ing liars!
Some authorities chalk up the inaccuracies to the firm’s sloppy bookkeeping....
Gimme a f***ing break hey!!!!!!!!
The search for MF Global’s missing money has consumed a growing number of authorities, including the FBI and federal prosecutors in New York and Chicago.
Translation: the cover-up is in full swing.
These inquiries have increasingly homed in on the theory that much of the customer money had left the firm, the people briefed on the matter said.
Regulators currently suspect that MF Global - at the time run by Jon S. Corzine, the former Democratic governor of New Jersey - improperly used customer money for its own purposes in the days before filing for Chapter 11 protection on Oct. 31.
Investigators are considering two possible situations. One is that MF Global used the money to meet trading partners’ demands for extra cash, which could come back. The other is that it was used to cover trading losses, which would mean that the money cannot be recovered.
MF Global’s management, however, has maintained that some of the money is still sitting at clearinghouses and banks, according to a person close to the company. Though they do not dispute that some of the money is gone, these executives think that other funds were trapped after the firm rapidly unwound more than half of its trading book as it was collapsing.
No one at MF Global, including its former chief executive, Corzine, has been accused of wrongdoing....
MF Global is still running on about $8 million in remaining cash....
I have to tell you, dear and beloved reader, that doesn't look like bankruptcy to me.
--more--"
Another crew of mofos getting into the act:
"Congress calls Corzine to testify" November 23, 2011|By Zeke Faux and Phil Mattingly, Bloomberg News
WASHINGTON - Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Robert Cook, director of trading and markets at the Securities and Exchange Commission; William C. Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; and Bradley Abelow, MF Global’s president and chief operating officer, have also been asked to appear at the hearing, according to a person with direct knowledge of the panel’s plans....
--more--"
"Congress may subpoena Corzine" December 02, 2011|Bloomberg News
WASHINGTON - Jon S. Corzine, the former chairman and chief executive of MF Global Holdings Ltd., may be subpoenaed to testify before House and Senate committees investigating the collapse of the brokerage....
--more--"
"Trading firms’ use of customer funds restricted" December 06, 2011|By Marcy Gordon, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Farmers, ranchers, and small business owners have said they have lost money that they had deposited with MF Global. Many of them use the futures markets to hedge against risks, such as swings in corn or fuel prices.
In other words, regular people got screwed again.
The rule adopted yesterday also ends the practice of firms borrowing from their customers for what are essentially loans to the firms. It also ends those kinds of financing transactions, known as repurchase agreements, between affiliates of the same firm.
Little late, ain't it? Wasn't that all supposed to be part of Dodd-Frank?
Firms can continue to invest customer money in US Treasury securities, municipal bonds, and certificates of deposit.
The U.S. government is always happy to take anyone's money these days.
The rule will take effect in about 60 days, and firms will have roughly six months to comply.
The situation is that urgent, huh?
MF Global was believed to have raised much of the money for its investments in European debt with repurchase agreements with other financial firms. But regulators say MF Global may have borrowed from customer accounts to fund more short-term operations, such as covering demands for collateral.
--more--"
"Third panel subpoenas Corzine" by Associated Press December 8, 2011
A third congressional panel has voted to subpoena former senator Jon Corzine to testify about his role leading MF Global, the brokerage that failed this fall. The oversight panel of the House Financial Services Committee voted yesterday to compel Corzine to testify at a Dec. 15 hearing. He had declined to appear voluntarily.
--NOMORE--"
"Corzine blames predecessors; Ex-CEO testifies on firm’s collapse" by Daniel Wagner and Marcy Gordon Associated Press / December 9, 2011
Jon Corzine told a congressional panel yesterday that he never intended to break rules requiring failed securities firm MF Global to safeguard client funds. He also said he doesn’t know what happened to an estimated $1.2 billion that went missing....
Lame.
Corzine deflected blame for the company’s collapse. He argued that he inherited a firm already doomed by his predecessors’ bad financial decisions.
Remember "might not have happened before Corzine’s tenure?"
The guy is in-f***ing-credible, isn't he?
--NOMORE--"
Related: Corzine distances himself from firm's downfall
Every article is a REWRITTEN POS different from that IN MY PRINTED PAPER!
Mofo Boston Globe!
He appeared strained and at times grasped for words.
That's what liars do.
But Corzine responded to every question posed, choosing not to exercise his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
So that does what, make him a hero?
His answers were cautiously worded. He often said he couldn't recall or lacked access to materials needed for him to answer.
"I'm not in a position, given the number of transactions, to know anything specific about the movement of any specific funds," he said.
Why would people invest with this loser, and now you know why New Jersey was such a mess when he was guvena.
Still, Corzine said that he accepts responsibility for the firm's risky bets and that its customers' losses weigh on his mind "every day -- every hour."
What is WRONG with MOFOs like these?
He CASTS BLAME on others, but says I accept responsibility. What an INSINCERE a**hole!
And then we wonder why the rest of the society points fingers when they do something wrong.
************************
Corzine, who headed Goldman Sachs before entering politics, defended his tenure at MF Global.
(Blog editor let the expletives fly when he read that)
It toppled, he said, partly, because of a large quarterly loss caused by his predecessors' accounting moves. Rating agencies responded to the loss by downgrading the firm's credit rating, which panicked investors and trading partners.
"The marketplace lost confidence in our firm," he said.
He accepts responsibility -- and then BLAMES EVERYONE ELSE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Corzine said he made the high-stakes bets only after discussions with company executives who traded European debt long before he arrived. And he said he reduced MF Global's investment risks by some measures....
--more--"
Also see: $2.2b transfer approved for MF Global clients
They must have found some of the mofo money, huh?
