MF Global Claims Due Jan. 31
Claim forms due next Tuesday to be eligible to recover lost money.
Compiled by staff
Published: Jan 23, 2012
Next Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012 is the deadline for all commodity customers who lost money when MF Global collapsed last fall to submit claim forms in order to be eligible to recover money that was lost. MF Global, a Wall Street brokerage firm that traded on commodities markets, declared bankruptcy in October. Bankruptcy officials are now working to distribute remaining funds to customers. All non-commodity creditor claims are due June 2, 2012. MF Global's bankruptcy court is set on Thursday extending the Jan. 31 deadline for commodity customer claims.
MF Global’s bankruptcy, the result of poor investments in European sovereign debt, was approved in November. Since then, the trustee handling MF Global’s accounts has returned over 70% of funds to customers, but recent estimates indicate that $1.2 billion in customer funds remain missing. However, there will not be any additional distributions until the end of the bankruptcy trustee process.
A briefing this week held by the commodity futures industry’s trade association shed little light on how MF Global misplaced nearly $1 billion before its bankruptcy. ?
The session was sponsored by the Commodity Markets Council and included statements from Ann Shuman, a deputy general counsel for the CME Group.
CME representatives could not offer new details about the whereabouts of the missing money, which is currently estimated to be just over $1 billion, but they did reiterate statements made in Congressional hearings that the crisis arose due to poor, and possibly illegal, decisions by MF Global rather than a lack of oversight. ??
At the briefing, it was noted that CME was auditing MF Global in the week leading up to its bankruptcy because of the possibility that MF was going to be sold to another firm. During this audit, CME found a sizeable shortfall in funds that they first attributed to an "accounting error," but later said may have been due to an illegal transfer of funds.??
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