World Largest OTC Derivative Broker about to go under (Congress, attorneys, independence)

[J746NEW]

MF Global hires bankruptcy lawyers: WSJ - MarketWatch

This is a Huge story!

MF Global hires bankruptcy lawyers: WSJ

MF Global Holdings Ltd. MF +10.00% has engaged attorneys tp prepare for a possible bankruptcy filing or other restructuring if it is unable to sell all or part of its broker-dealer, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. The financial firm has hired law firms Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Weil, Gotshal & Manges "to prepare potential restructuring options," the report said. MF Global ended with a 16.1% loss on Friday, having lost 85.7% of its value so far this year, as investors worry about the firm's exposure to Europe.

MF Global Holdings Ltd, formerly known as MF Global Inc., formerly known as Man Financial,[1] is one of the world's largest derivatives brokers with a significant presence in OTC products and cash securities. The Bermuda-registered group was rebranded and spun off from Man Group in July 2007 through an initial public offering (IPO) which valued the company at $3.63 billion.[2] It changed its name to MF Global Holdings Ltd in January 2010, when it moved its headquarters to Delaware.[3]

As of 2008, MF Global was the world's largest futures retail broker, with over 138,000[5] active client accounts. It has grown organically and through 18 acquisitions since 1989, including its 2005 purchase of client accounts and other assets from Refco.

The company has a global footprint through offices in New York and Chicago, Bermuda, Toronto, London, Paris, Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, Taipei, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Dubai. It operates on more than 70 exchanges,[6][7] and is the largest single broker on most of the leading platforms including the CME and Eurex.

[chielgirl]

I'd like to see no bankruptcy benefits afforded to this group.
I'd like to see them have to repay with every asset they and their management (and their families) have.

[shorebaby]

Yup, the Dems strike again. Guess who runs this company?

[Mircea]

The financial firm has hired law firms Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Weil, Gotshal & Manges

I don't think you could make up names like that for a law firm.

I would liken this to the collapse of the East India Trading Company.

If you're interested in economic history, one of the things you can read and grasp fairly easily, plus have internet access to is Braudell. It's kind of dated, but there's a fair amount of material on the collapse of the East India Trading Company.

That's why the US exists under a constitutional government.

The collapse of the East India Trading Company caused rolling recessions globally. France and the Italian city-States, and to a lesser extent Spain were not really affected, but Russia, the German duchies and principalities, the Nordic States, the Lowlands (BENELUX), Britain and the British Colonies in the Americas were.

Even China and Japan were affected.

Anyway, Britain is nearly bankrupt, and starts levying all manner of taxes on the Colonies in an attempt to get cash or goods. The Colonies are suffering from the recession, plus there's a major drought in the Atlantic Coast Colonies, and it is near-famine conditions in some areas of the Colonies.

Britain enacts the Stamp Tax, which leads to the formation of the Stamp Tax Congress. Only a few Colonies were involved with that, but if created the format for the later Continental Congress.

Then you have the Tea Tax and the subsequent Boston Tea Party.

Additional taxes, plus the British are sending troops to enforce tax collection, and things start getting ugly, leading to the Declaration of Independence.

The drought ends, but the farmers are bankrupt, and the recession is still on and there's no one to sell to, except the Continental Congress. They take the farmer's goods on credit.

Then after the war, the Continental Congress defaults on all of its debts, leaving the farmers high and dry.

Then the Congress of the Articles of the Confederation starts levying oppressive taxes, and the farmers, who had suffered through 9 years of drought and 15 years of recession only to have the Continental Congress default on the crops they purchased go berserk and start rebelling. That leads to Shay's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion and dozens of other small rebellions you never heard of, and that leads to the creation of the Constitutional Government.

And all of that was triggered by one event: the collapse of the East India Trading Company.

If the East India Trading Company does not collapse, then Britain is not economically wiped out and does not levy the Stamp Tax, Tea Tax and all of the other taxes to get revenues, and there is no Stamp Tax Congress or Boston Tea Party or Boston Massacre or Declaration of Independence or War of Colonial Independence and no United States.

[Old Gringo]

I wonder how big the bonuses will be that they pay themselves as they go under?