Hey, what’s another $400 million when you’re a well-connected liberal Democrat?
The trustee supervising the liquidation of MF Global Holdings’ brokerage said Friday that more than $1.6 billion in customer cash remains out of his grasp, more than previously estimated.
The figure was revised upward from the previous $1.2-billion estimate largely because of the way the trustee, James Giddens, is defining various chunks of money left behind — or still missing — after the broker-dealer’s late-October collapse.
Included in Giddens’ estimate for the first time is approximately $700 million in client money seen residing in the UK that is likely to be the center of a legal fight with KPMG, the UK-based administrator overseeing the unwind of MF Global’s London-based division.
“We now know we’re in for a long haul with the UK administrator,” said a spokesman for James Giddens, the court-appointed trustee for MF Global’s brokerage in New York.
Giddens this week was cleared by US bankruptcy court to hire Slaughter & May, a London law firm, as the process of securing funds from MF Global’s foreign-based operations plays out.
Waiting for Obama to get involved, in the interest of fairness, in 3…2…1….