- MF Global represents first significant liquidation of a brokerage firm jointly registered as a broker-dealer with the SEC and a commodity broker with the CFTC
- Liquidation of MF Global will require the unprecedented application of two distinct bankruptcy and customer asset protection regimes that lack harmonization
- Over 40 of the 50 largest commodity brokers are dually registered as broker-dealers
Even in these early days, the collapse of MF Global is proving significant for a number of reasons. In addition to being one of the ten largest bankruptcies in U.S. history, MF Global’s collapse potentially involves missing customer assets amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. In the long run, however, one of the larger distinctions may prove to be that the liquidation of MF Global will require the unprecedented application of two vastly different bankruptcy and customer asset protection regimes to a sizeable brokerage firm.
See the T-H Client Alert attached for further analysis of this important development.