MF Global trustee says $1.2 billion missing

The trustee overseeing the wind-down of MF Global Holdings Ltd.'s brokerage said Monday that more than $1.2 billion in customer funds could be missing from the failed firm, more than double the original estimate of missing cash.

Trustee James W. Giddens also added in a statement that he does not have access to funds beyond $1.6 billion already on hand and is "very close to exhausting the funds under his control."

Giddens said restoring customer accounts to 60 percent of their value -- a previously announced goal -- would require as much as $1.6 billion.

That next step still requires approval of the bankruptcy court and should occur in early December, Giddens said.

Regulators had previously said that approximately $600 million of funds in segregated accounts owned by former MF Global customers was unaccounted for at the time of the firm's bankruptcy filing on Oct. 31.

Giddens also said efforts to collect other funds from US depositories is continuing "around the clock," but the recovery is complicated by assets located in foreign depositories. Recovery of such assets could take more time, Giddens said.

Giddens has estimated that he is overseeing about 38,000 customer accounts, but that number -- and how much money those accounts contain -- has been fluid as the trustee has scrambled to sort through the brokerage's records.

Associated Press pointed out that the bankrupt firm might sue Corzine to “claw back” the salary and bonuses it paid him during his tenure as its CEO

Nick Purpura, of Wall Township, was a managing director at Bear Sterns. He remembers Corzine from his Wall Street days, and none too fondly. He told this Examiner this afternoon that he wouldn’t put anything past Corzine.

http://www.examiner.com/essex-county-conservative-in-newark/fmr-gov-corzine-might-be-trouble-over-mf-global

Corzine’s Wealth Is Eroding With His Reputation

How much is Jon Corzine worth?

Conventional wisdom suggests that the former chief executive of Goldman Sachs (GS: 91.30, -0.61, -0.66%), US Senator, New Jersey governor, and until last week, the head of MF Global has a net worth well into the hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly even close to $1 billion.

But according to former colleagues and others who are close to Corzine, the net worth of the man some say bought his first political office by spending $60 million of his own money to become US Senator no longer puts him among the uber-rich — a status he had grown accustomed to during his long years in banking and politics.

In fact, Corzine, these people say, is worth far closer to $1 million than he is to $1 billion, particularly after the MF Global debacle and the legal headaches it will cost him for years to come.

Consider the following: Corzine left Goldman in 1999 with a net worth estimated to be around $350 million, but over the next decade he spent around $130 million on his various political campaigns, including most recently an unsuccessful run for New Jersey governor, where he needed to raise money from outside sources precisely because he didn’t have enough of his own to self-finance the campaign.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.