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Money Found in Britain May Belong to MF Global

About $200 million in customer money that vanished from MF Global is believed to have surfaced at JPMorgan Chase in Britain, according to people briefed on the matter. The discovery could be the most significant breakthrough in a monthlong hunt for the missing funds. During MF Global’s last chaotic days, the brokerage firm overdrew an account at JPMorgan, according to another person who is close to the matter. Some investigators now believe the firm used customer funds to patch at least some of the hole, which would have been a significant breach of federal law. Read New York Times report [...]

Corzine Asked to Testify Before Senate on MF Global Collapse

Jon S. Corzine, the former New Jersey governor and U.S. senator who led MF Global Holdings Ltd. before the firm sought bankruptcy protection on Oct. 31, has been called to testify Dec. 13 at a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on the collapse. Corzine, who was chairman and chief executive officer of the New York-based firm, was asked to testify alongside MF Global customers who face as much as $1.2 billion in missing funds, Senator Debbie Stabenow, the Michigan Democrat who leads the panel, said in a statement today. Read Bloomberg report [...]

Florida outsider wins small-firm seat on Finra appeals board

Karen Fischer, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based compliance consultant, has won a small-firm seat on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc.’s appeals board. She beat out David Sobel, general counsel at Abel/Noser Corp., for the spot on Finra’s National Adjudicatory Council. Read more in Investment News [...]

Stanford Still Not Competent for Ponzi Trial – Lawyer

Despite nine months of court-ordered drug treatment, accused Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford is not yet competent to face charges he ran a $7 billion Ponzi scheme, his attorney told CNBC. As a result, thousands of Stanford investors remain in limbo, nearly three years after the alleged scheme was exposed. Read CNBC report [...]

The S.E.C.’s Enabling

Judge Jed Rakoff is furious. He should be. We all should be. On Monday, the Federal District Court judge rightly rejected a plan by the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle a securities fraud case against Citigroup…It’s not only that the money was not enough, though it certainly seems puny compared with the damage done. It’s not even that the S.E.C. only accused Citigroup of negligence, when Judge Rakoff said that his understanding of the matter indicates that a tougher charge of knowing or intentional fraud was probably warranted. Read New York Times Editorial [...]

Judge Blocks Citigroup Settlement With S.E.C.

The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of United States District Court in Manhattan, said that he could not determine whether the agency’s settlement with Citigroup was “fair, reasonable, adequate and in the public interest,” as required by law, because the agency had claimed, but had not proved, that Citigroup committed fraud. As it has in recent cases involving Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, UBS and others, the agency proposed to settle the case by levying a fine on Citigroup and allowing it to neither admit nor deny the agency’s findings. Such settlements require approval by a federal judge.
Read New York Times report [...]

HSBC proposes amended settlement in Madoff case

HSBC Holdings Plc has proposed a revised $62.5 million settlement with investors in an Irish fund that lost money in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, after a U.S. judge rejected an earlier accord. The British bank said the revised settlement for investors, in Thema International Fund Plc, addresses issues raised by U.S. District Judge Richard Berman in Manhattan, who on September 7 called the original accord “not fair, reasonable or adequate.” Read Reuters report [...]

If Warren Buffett Can Have Secrets, Why Can’t I?

Warren Buffett recently announced he had amassed 5.4% of IBM — without telling anybody for months. The only hint until recently was an obscure footnote in Berkshire Hathaway‘s Security and Exchange Commission’s form 13(f) “Confidential information has been omitted..and filed separately with the commission”. (International Herald Tribune, 11/16/2011). What! How is that fair? Read more in Forbes [...]

Futures Industry Reconsiders Customer Bailout After MF Global Disaster

In November 1986, shaken by traders’ losses after a brokerage went bust, the U.S. futures industry considered, and then rejected, the notion of insuring customer funds in a broker default. The collapse last month of MF Global Holdings Inc, and hundreds of millions of dollars of still-missing customer money, is forcing a rethink of that 25-year-old decision. Read more in the Huffington Post here. [...]

Jury To Hear Madoff Trustee’s Suit Against Mets Owners

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff ruled Wednesday in Manhattan that the trustee has the constitutional right to have a jury hear his $386 million lawsuit against the Mets owners, including Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz. In so ruling, Rakoff rejected the Mets owners’ claim that Picard had no right to a jury trial because he, like Madoff’s firm itself, could not bring fraudulent transfer claims, reports Reuters. Read more in FinAlternatives [...]