The last days of MF Global
Money and Finance

The last days of MF Global


The collapse of MF Global in October 2011 was a remarkably powerful event: It destroyed the reputation of a famous man; it elevated a firm that no one had ever heard of to infamy; and it shattered public trust in the belief that brokerage customers' money is always safe.

In the months that followed, America's eighth-largest bankruptcy has become a spectacle and public scandal. Jon Corzine, the former U.S. senator, governor, and chief of Goldman Sachs who rode MF Global into the abyss, finds his legacy in tatters. And the hunt for the money continues, with investigators chasing $1.6 billion in customer cash that went  missing—something that's neverhappened before on Wall Street.

A six-month Fortune investigation into the failure of MF Global reveals a mismatch of tragic proportions: how a too-small company came together with a too-big CEO. Combining their mutual shortcomings—in ambition, controls, and discipline—simply proved toxic.

This story is based on more than seventy interviews with regulators, industry executives, legislators, lawyers, friends and family of Corzine, and people at all levels of MF Global. Fortune also gained access to hundreds of pages of confidential board minutes, internal reports, company emails, and other documents.




- How Mf Global's 'missing' $1.5 Billion Was Lost -- And Found
Last week a trustee won a court order that will likely lead to a complete recovery of the $1.5 billion shortfall left in customer accounts after Jon Corzine's MF Global crashed and burned in October 2011. So, was the money never really missing in...

- Mf Global Redux As Regulator Says Pfgbest Client Funds Missing
Less than nine months after MF Global's collapse sent shockwaves through U.S. futures brokerages, news that more than half the customer funds at Iowa-based PFGBest are missing is threatening to shatter the fragile confidence in the industry. PFGBest...

- After A Delay, Mf Global’s Missing Money Is Traced
Investigators have determined what happened to nearly all of the customer money that disappeared from MF Global around the time of its bankruptcy last Oct. 31, but have not publicly disclosed their progress, fearing that doing so might cripple efforts...

- Mf Global Client Money Feared Gone
Nearly three months after MF Global Holdings collapsed, officials hunting for an estimated $1.2 billion in missing customer money increasingly believe that much of it might never be recovered, according to people familiar with the investigation. As the...

- Revisiting Rehypothecation
From the Naked Capitalism blog:We’ve been loath to comment on a Thomson Reuters article that claimed that rehypothecation of assets in customer accounts was the reason MF Global customer funds went missing. The reason we’ve stayed away from this debate...



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