Scandal: MF Global’s money still missing
Former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine last week defended the high-risk trades that led to the brokerage firm’s collapse, and he claimed to be just as puzzled as regulators are about how an estimated $1.2 billion went missing from customer accounts, said Scott Patterson in The Wall Street Journal. “I simply do not know where the money is,” Corzine told a congressional committee last week. In his first public appearance since MF Global’s Oct. 31 bankruptcy, the “visibly tense” former New Jersey governor argued that what felled his firm was not its $6.3 billion bet on European debt, but “a sudden lack of confidence in its balance sheet.”
It’s little wonder that Corzine maintains that MF Global’s bets on European debt were prudent, said Azam Ahmed in The New York Times. After all, he played a “hands-on role in the firm’s high-stakes risk-taking,” pushing the wagers through “despite concerns from other executives and board members.” A review of his tenure suggests that Corzine was “at heart a trader, willing to gamble for a rich payoff.” Indeed, shortly after taking over the firm in 2010, Corzine became a “core member” of the group that actively traded MF Global’s money.
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