Corzine Resigns From MF Global After Bankruptcy

By Cristina Alesci - Nov 4, 2011 7:04 PM GMT+0700

Jon Corzine resigned as chairman and chief executive officer of MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MF), the broker- dealer that filed the eighth-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history this week.

Corzine, 64, the former co-CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), quit all of his posts, New York-based MF Global said today in an e-mailed statement. Corzine won’t seek severance pay, the company said.

“I have voluntarily offered my resignation to the Board of Directors of MF Global,” Corzine said in a separate statement. “This was a difficult decision, but one that I believe is best for the firm and its stakeholders.”

His resignation came four days after the bankruptcy filing as the company’s bets on European sovereign debt rattled investors. U.S. regulators are investigating about $633 million missing from MF Global customer accounts, a person briefed on the matter said yesterday. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission sent a subpoena seeking information about the money to MF Global’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, the person said, asking not to be named because the matter isn’t public.

Corzine, a former governor of New Jersey who helped run Goldman Sachs from 1994 to 1999, sought to transform MF Global into a mid-size investment bank after arriving there in March 2010. He increased the firm’s risk and used its own money to trade, including investments in European sovereign debt.

MF Global owns $6.3 billion of Italian, Spanish, Belgian, Portuguese and Irish debt, the company said in an Oct. 25 presentation. Concerns that it might lose money on the holdings amid Europe’s debt crisis led to credit downgrades, margin calls and demands from regulators to boost capital before the bankruptcy filing.

“I feel great sadness for what has transpired at MF Global and the impact it has had on the firm’s clients, employees and many others,” Corzine said in his statement. He said he would continue to assist the company in responding to regulatory inquiries and in the “disposition of the firm’s assets.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Cristina Alesci in New York at calesci2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Steve Dickson at sdickson1@bloomberg.net; David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net