By Silla Brush and Matthew Leising - Nov 2, 2011 2:15 AM GMT+0700
Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago lawyer who represents investors in securities litigation, talks about MF Global Holdings Ltd. and prospects for stronger securities regulation. MF Global, under investigation by U.S. regulators after filing for bankruptcy protection, violated requirements that it keep clients’ collateral separate from its own accounts, said CME Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Craig Donohue on a conference call with analysts today. Stoltmann speaks with Mark Crumpton on Bloomberg Television's "Bottom Line." (Source: Bloomberg)
Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Darrell Duffie, a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, talks about allegations that MF Global Holdings Ltd. violated requirements that it keep clients' collateral separate from its own accounts. He speaks with Adam Johnson on Bloomberg Television's "Street Smart." (Source: Bloomberg)
Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- William Cohan, author of "Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World" and a Bloomberg View columnist, talks about the performance of MF Global Holdings Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Jon Corzine. MF Global told regulators about potential "deficiencies" in some customer accounts, according to a statement by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Cohan speaks with Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack." (Source: Bloomberg)
MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MF), under investigation by U.S. regulators after filing for bankruptcy protection, violated requirements that it keep clients’ collateral separate from its own accounts, the head of the world’s largest futures exchange said.
Craig Donohue, CME Group’s chief executive officer, said on a conference call with analysts today that MF Global isn’t in compliance with the rules of the exchange and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
“While we are unable to determine the precise scope of the firm’s violation at this time, we are investigating the circumstances of the firm’s failure,” Donohue said.
MF Global, the holding company for the futures broker run by former New Jersey Governor and ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Co-Chairman Jon Corzine, is being investigated by regulators for hundreds of millions of dollars that may be missing from client accounts, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
CME Group’s Chicago Mercantile Exchange is the designated self-regulatory organization for MF Global, meaning it audits and monitors the firm’s positions on a regular basis, said Laurie Bischel, a CME Group spokeswoman.
MF Global told regulators yesterday about shortfalls in accounts that it managed for clients in the futures market, the CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission said in an e-mailed statement. MF Global was ordered by the CFTC’s enforcement division to preserve records for the review, said one of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe isn’t public.
Shortfall
The shortfall may be about $700 million, two other people with knowledge of the matter said today.
Corzine, 64, now faces a regulatory probe as well as a bankruptcy. He wagered $6.3 billion of the firm’s own money on sovereign European debt in a bid to increase profits. Dozens of MF Global employees were involved in structuring, booking and clearing the trades tied to European debt, and the company’s board of directors approved the transactions, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The firm reported a $191.6 million quarterly loss on Oct. 25 as Europe’s debt crisis led to demands from regulators to boost capital, as well as credit downgrades and margin calls, MF Global President Bradley Abelow said.
BlackRock Role
BlackRock Solutions, a unit of BlackRock Inc., was called in on Oct. 28 to examine MF Global’s balance sheet and determine if some assets could be sold, according to a person briefed on the discussions. BlackRock ended its review when it became clear the firm wouldn’t find buyers and that there were shortfalls in client accounts, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private.
Bobbie Collins, a spokeswoman for BlackRock, declined to comment.
Corzine and Diana Desocio, an MF Global spokeswoman, didn’t respond to e-mails or phone messages seeking comment.
Under the regulations, futures brokers that trade on exchanges are required to keep their clients’ collateral, often cash or securities, separate from their own accounts. The segregated collateral is meant to reduce risk in futures trades. MF Global had almost $7.3 billion in customer funds in segregated accounts as of Aug. 31, according to the most recent CFTC data.
“It’s kind of considered the third rail of the brokerage industry that when you’re holding your customers’ funds in their names, you don’t touch them -- even in an emergency situation when you’re running short of cash,” Darrell Duffie, a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, said in a telephone interview.
‘Mishandled’
“The fact that the CME has stated that customer funds have been mishandled increases the likelihood that this is not just a simple accounting error or IT glitch,” he said. “The CME obviously has access to its own clearing account records and would probably have based its statement on a review of those records.”
The missing funds were reported yesterday by the New York Times. MF Global customers have been calling the Washington offices of the Securities Investor Protection Corp. today asking for their money, a lawyer for the corporation said.
“What customers ask is, ‘When am I getting my money?’” said Kevin Bell, senior associate general counsel of the government-created entity, which is overseeing the liquidation of the brokerage. “You tell them to sit tight, and start gathering their information so they can file claims. Canceled checks, trade confirmations, account statements.”
‘Prudent’
The regulators said in their statement yesterday that they advised bankruptcy as the “safest and most prudent course of action to protect customer accounts and assets.”
MF Global listed debt of $39.7 billion and assets of $41 billion in Chapter 11 papers filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.
Corzine, who won the top job at Goldman Sachs by leading the firm’s fixed-income unit, was recruited to the firm in 1975 as a trainee on the government bond desk. He graduated in 1969 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, served in the Marine Corps Reserve and received his master’s degree in business administration from the University of Chicago in 1973.
Senate
Corzine, a Democrat, was elected to the U.S. Senate a year after he left Goldman Sachs in 1999 with an estimated $400 million as the firm went public. He became governor in 2006 and was defeated in November 2009 by Republican Chris Christie.
MF Global’s board met through the weekend to consider options including a sale, a person with direct knowledge of the situation said. The firm was in discussions with five potential buyers for all or parts of the company, including banks, private-equity firms and brokers, a person with knowledge of the matter said on Oct. 28.
Interactive Brokers Group Inc. decided against a rescue early yesterday after a discrepancy surfaced in MF Global’s customer accounts, said Hans Stoll, an Interactive Brokers board member and a professor of finance at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.
“The board certainly considered that purchase and stepped away from it at a point where it became clear there were lots of uncertainties about the accounts and segregated funds and those sorts of things,” Stoll said in a telephone interview.
Even if Interactive Brokers had decided to go ahead, regulators wouldn’t have approved a deal because of the uncertainty over client funds, one of the people with knowledge of the matter said today.
Thomas Peterffy, Interactive Brokers’ chief executive officer, declined to comment today.
“The first thing you do in any liquidation is go through the accounts and figure out what’s in there and whether they’ve been properly credited,” said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. “If they say it’s been credited and in fact they’re not there, then you have some very major problems.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Silla Brush in Washington at sbrush@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lawrence Roberts at lroberts13@bloomberg.net
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