The trustee overseeing the liquidation of MF Global Inc. has resolved all but 200 of the 28,000 claims filed by the failed brokerage’s commodities and securities customers and is at a “critical stage” in talks to resolve his differences with his counterparts in the U.S. and U.K. Trustee James Giddens “has been involved in intense discussions” with Louis Freeh, who is overseeing the liquidation of MF Global’s holding company, and KPMG, MF Global’s U.K. insolvency administrator, during the last several months for the return of customer property and to eliminate their competing claims. See Fox Business report [...]
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Much has been said about the unfinished business that Mary L. Schapiro will leave behind as she steps down as chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission after nearly four years. But it did not have to be this way. Looking back to the early days of the S.E.C. in the 1930s shows that a wholesale, sweeping overhaul can be accomplished quickly if the right leadership is installed. And it would behoove President Obama to learn from the lessons of history as he seeks out the next head of the nation’s principal securities market regulator. To her credit, Ms. Schapiro has made considerable progress in shoring up the reputation of an agency battered by the missed Bernie Madoff fraud and its perceived impotence during the Lehman collapse and subsequent financial crisis. Yet some of the big changes demanded as a result of the 2008 financial crisis are still to be undertaken. Read New York Times report [...] NEW YORK (Reuters) – The trustee overseeing the liquidation of MF Global’s failed futures brokerage said he expects the more than 28,000 customer claims that have been filed to be fully resolved within the next few months, according to a report filed in court on Tuesday. However, further distributions to those customers will hinge largely on the outcome of pending claims against the failed brokerage by its parent company, MF Global Holdings Ltd , and its British affiliate, according to the progress report from trustee James Giddens. “We are in a critical phase of negotiation and potential litigation right now,” said Kent Jarrell, a spokesman for Giddens. “The result of this will determine when and how much in additional distributions we can send back to the former customers, and define the parameters and the size of the claims against the general estate.” WASHINGTON — In 2006, Allen Stanford had yet to be identified as the mastermind of one of the largest and longest-running Ponzi schemes in U.S. history, but he faced mounting pressure. Federal securities examiners were pushing for an investigation into his investment operation, which tens of thousands of soon-to-be victims had entrusted with nearly $7 billion. Some of the Texas financier’s own employees were threatening to tell authorities what they knew about his fraud. Stanford was so concerned that a former senior State Department official named Jonathan Winer might expose his colossal con game that he ordered an investigation into Winer’s private life, according to Stanford’s previously secret records obtained by McClatchy. Click here to read [...] House Democrats urged regulatory action against MF Global Holdings Ltd. MFGLQ 0.00% in a report released Monday, saying the former securities firm “blatantly misled” a regulator about its exposure to European sovereign debt. The report, an addendum to the majority-party report released by the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said MF Global told the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a Wall Street self-regulator, it didn’t have any exposure to European sovereign debt in September 2010. Had the firm admitted such exposure, the report said, Finra “could have forced MF Global to…take appropriate capital charges for its investment at that time.” More in the Wall Street Journal [...] In one of her last acts as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Schapiro delayed a rule potentially affecting hundreds of billions of dollars of private offerings by companies, in part because of concerns about her personal legacy, according to previously unpublished documents. Internal SEC emails, released to a congressional panel and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, appear to show how a last-minute intervention by a consumer lobbyist might have helped persuade Ms. Schapiro to change her mind and delay one of the centerpiece measures of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups, or JOBS, Act. Read more in the Wall Street Journal [...] Irving Picard, the trustee working to recover funds for victims of Bernard Madoff, is asking a judge to block a settlement reached with the founders of Fairfield Greenwich Group. Picard says the investors funneled billions of dollars to Madoff. Picard said in court documents that if the settlement proceeds, it will “thwart the Trustee’s efforts to recover funds for equitable distribution to the victims of the Ponzi scheme.” The settlement with Fairfield, reached last month, represents a “substantial portion” of what the Fairfield defendants might recover, court documents said. More on Inside Council [...] In March 2012, a group of online retailers was sued in federal court, accused of having participated in a cynical and longstanding scheme to cheat customers out of millions of dollars. One of the named defendants is 1-800-Flowers.com Inc., which says it is the world’s leading florist and gift shop. The plaintiffs said the system worked this way: a customer, perhaps racing to buy flowers online for Mother’s Day, would enter a credit card number, click “Purchase,” and then be offered a cash-back rebate. If the customer clicked on the rebate option and failed to read the fine print, however, he or she wound up registering for a near-worthless club membership that would charge the credit card for months, sometimes years, before the expenses on the credit card statements were detected. Outfits like 1-800-Flowers.com received a cut of the operation, what regulators and others have called “bounties.” More in the New York Times [...] Irving Picard, who this year returned $2.4 billion to Bernard L. Madoff’s cheated investors, is seeking bankruptcy-court approval of $61.7 million in fees for himself and his law firm. Mr. Picard, who has overseen the winding down of Mr. Madoff’s firm for the past four years, and his law firm of Baker & Hostetler LLP have charged $61.7 million for 179,055 hours of work performed between Feb. 1 and June 30, court papers show. They are also seeking reimbursement of $1 million in expenses. More in the Wall Street Journal here. When Mary Schapiro steps down as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission on Dec. 14, she’ll leave behind an agency riven by partisanship. It now falls to her successor, Elisse Walter, to carry out President Obama’s agenda over the resistance of Republican commissioners, skeptical conservative judges, and a well-financed financial industry lobby. “You need someone who’s pretty thick-skinned” to move the SEC forward, says Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America. “Schapiro’s been chairman under the most difficult conditions I’ve seen an SEC chair face in the 25 years I’ve been following these issues.” Read more on Bloomberg Businessweek here. [...] |
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