Posted on 11/21/2011 12:23:57 PM PST by kcvl
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.
To read more, go to MarketWatch.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Corzine was just Bernie Madoff lite. Anyone think Holder will actually persue a criminal referral against him?
Of course not!
That would mean customer accounts are missing about 22 percent of their total of $5.4 billion.
"For the little guy" liberal Democrat, Jon Corzine at work... LMBO!!
Jon Corzine - he put the “MF” in MF Global!
A couple of waterboarding sessions might induce Corzine to tell us where that money is!;)
Missing?
Just look in the DNC and Union Coffers...........
To those who think they wouldn't dare, I remind you of Clinton and Marc Rich...
Evidently, MF Global could not find its butt with both hands.
God made Mr. Corzine greedy - then he slammed the door on him.
I hope you enjoy the Gray Bar Hotel, Mr. Corzine.
Giddens also said he currently controls about $1.6 billion of the brokerage’s funds that he can use to pay back customers whose accounts were frozen when MF Global went bankrupt on Oct. 31. His plans to pay back 60 percent of customer funds by early December would nearly exhaust that amount.
One question is whether MF Global may have improperly co-mingled customer money with its own funds.
Chairman Gary Gensler (Commodity Futures Trading Commission)recused himself from the probe because of his ties to Corzine.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/21/mfglobal-idUSN1E7AK0RJ20111121
When Corzine ran for New Jersey governor, Gensler gave $10,000 to the state Democratic Party, which was trying to get Corzine elected.
Now, Gensler, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is leading an inquiry into how hundreds of millions vanished last week from client accounts at Corzine’s firm, MF Global.
Less than a year ago, federal markets regulator Gary Gensler could reflect fondly on his association with Wall Street mogul and former politician Jon S. Corzine.
The two had known each other for years, working together at Goldman Sachs and then in Congress, where Corzine was a senator and Gensler was a Senate aide. Invited by Corzine last November to speak at Princeton University about financial regulation, Gensler reminisced about their days crafting legislation and got in a friendly jab about Corzine’s upcoming wedding.
During the Clinton administration, he (Gensler) and other administration officials resisted efforts to regulate the complex instruments known as derivatives, which later contributed to the financial crisis. Now, Gensler is forcefully leading efforts to impose restraints on the industry.
Last year, the CFTC proposed tightening restrictions on what brokerage firms can do with customers’ funds. But the proposal met opposition from members of the industry, including Corzine. MF Global wanted the freedom to continue engaging in transactions by which it can essentially borrow funds from customers’ accounts.
My word, what a bill of goods both of these men sold to the voters.
Lies and more lies.
Shame on them.
When asked Friday about his association with the former Senator, Mr. Gensler replied, "John WHO?"
In addition to its bankruptcy filing and lay-offs of more than 1,000 employees, MF Global has told investigative authorities that $600 million of customer money is missing. The shortfall was withheld from investigating authorities for five days — an apparent violation of the law, according to the head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
“The statute is quite clear that customer money has to be segregated at all times of the day, at every moment of the day,” CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler testified recently before a congressional committee. “They’re in deficiency in their own words of their own email.”
Corzine has been keeping a low profile since he resigned as CEO of MF Global earlier this month. Repeated attempts by Fox News to reach him at his New Jersey home and his New York City apartment have been unsuccessful. He has hired a prominent defense attorney.
Gary Gensler spent 18 years at Goldman Sachs, making partner when he was 30, becoming head of the company’s fixed income and currency trading operations in Tokyo by the mid-’90s, and eventually the company’s co-head of finance.
Questions as to whether there are conflicts of interests relating to Gensler's former employment have been raised,[according to whom?] as has been the case in any number of former Goldman employees that go on to hold pivotal positions in the US Treasury, Federal Reserve, or as regulators. Gensler has the reputation in the market.
Subsequent to his time at the Treasury he acted as a Senior Adviser to Senator Paul Sarbanes, one of the authors of legislation that eventually became the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, designed to bring greater oversight to the accounting industry and reform of corporate governance.
Gensler was also a senior adviser to the Hillary Clinton campaign and, after the Democratic Primary, the Obama campaign
brother Robert Gensler who runs an actively-managed fund for T. Rowe Price
After retiring at age 39 from Goldman Sachs, the derivatives-mad firm that has profited nicely from the government’s multiple financial bailouts, Gensler came to the Clinton Treasury Department. There he worked on CFMA, the bill that allowed the derivatives market to metastasize into a hotbed of financial risk with an estimated value — before last fall’s financial crash — exceeding the world’s real financial holdings.
Gensler remained close to Wall Street players even after leaving the public sphere in 2000. He is a longtime investor in New Mountain Capital, a private buyout firm that paid him $70,000 last year in exchange for service on its advisory board. New Mountain, whose chief executive officer, Steven Klinsky, co-hosted a $28,500-per-head fundraiser for John McCain last year, even placed Gensler on the board of Strayer Education after taking it over eight years ago.
Gensler also defended himself from charges of complicity in the conscious deregulation of financial markets during the twilight of the Clinton era. “I believe that both our financial system and our regulatory structure failed the American people,” the repentant nominee wrote, adding that he was advised to recuse himself during the 1998 tussle over derivatives that pushed Brooksley Born from her chairmanship of the CFTC.
http://prospect.org/article/whats-problem-gary-gensler
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