A bankruptcy judge on Thursday will consider a request by James Giddens, the trustee supervising the liquidation of the MF Global Inc broker-dealer unit, to release $520 million to between 15,000 and 21,000 commodities customers who held only cash in their accounts.
The amount represents 60 percent of the $869 million of cash that had been frozen, Giddens said in papers filed late Tuesday in U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan. A transfer could be made "within days" of court approval, Giddens said.
Commodities traders and exchanges have clamored for the release of the money. They contend that the freeze punished customers who amassed the cash by liquidating their trading positions prior to MF Global's bankruptcy.
Customers may still get a payout even as investigators continue their pursuit of about $600 million that has gone missing from accounts of MF Global.
The Commodity Customer Coalition, a group of former MF Global customers, on Wednesday said Giddens should be distributing even more money, saying the trustee has access to more than $1.4 billion.
Commingled accounts
MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection on Oct. 31 amid a liquidity crunch as customers, credit-rating agencies and counterparties worried about its $6.3 billion bet on European sovereign debt.
New York-based MF Global had been run by former Goldman Sachs & Co chief Jon Corzine, who resigned on Nov. 4.
The bankruptcy was the seventh-largest in U.S. history, according to BankruptcyData.com and Reuters data.
Giddens' request to release the customer cash is scheduled to be considered Thursday morning at 11 a.m. ET (1600 GMT) by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn.
Prior to that, the judge is expected to hold a hearing on Wednesday afternoon to address other matters in the MF Global bankruptcy. Lawyers for MF Global may discuss the status of the missing funds and any progress in obtaining financing to keep the company operating while in bankruptcy.
Some of the regulatory focus on MF Global's collapse concerns whether the company improperly mixed customer funds with its own.
Scott O'Malia, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, urged his agency to help ensure that intermediaries such as MF Global properly maintain segregated accounts, and even perhaps hire independent overseers.
"Many have said that the failure of MF Global was not systemic and that we are lucky. I don't view it in the same light," O'Malia said in a statement posted on the CFTC website.
O'Malia urged the CFTC to require greater disclosures to customers about brokerages' proprietary trading, risk exposure, and means to ensure that their funds are segregated.
"The Commission must use MF Global as its own teachable moment" and reconsider its rulemaking pursuant to last year's Dodd-Frank financial reform law," said O'Malia, one of two Republican commissioners on the five-member CFTC.
SEC looking too
Other agencies, including the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, are also trying to locate the missing customer funds.
"What the firm self-reported was a shortfall on the futures side," Robert Cook, director of the SEC division of trading and markets, told the Senate Banking Committee. "As you can imagine, we are not taking that at face value."
Cook added that absent the shortfall, there would have been a "significant chance" that MF Global could have been saved.
The shortfall became apparent just hours before MF Global's bankruptcy and in part prompted Interactive Brokers Group Inc to abandon talks to buy many of the company's assets.
Giddens said CME Group Inc, which operates the world's largest futures exchange, proposed a $250 million guarantee to the MF Global Inc bankruptcy estate in case some of the payouts ultimately prove too high.
A federal insurance fund covering brokerage customers does not extend to commodities customers.
The cases are In re: MF Global Holdings Ltd et al, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-15059; and In re: MF Global Inc in the same court, No. 11-02790.
