por admin » Jue Nov 03, 2011 7:39 pm
Este Corzine es un pirata
MF escondia sus niveles de deuda. Recortaba la deuda justo antes de los reportes de fin de trimestre para que no salgan. Corzine hizo lobby para evitar que disminuyeran el trading de las firmas. Eso lo venia haciendo en los dos ultimos anios.
MARKETSNOVEMBER 4, 2011.
MF Global Masked Debt Risks
Firm Cut Borrowing Before Reports; Corzine Lobbied Against Trading Curbs.
By MICHAEL RAPOPORT
For the past two years, MF Global Holdings Ltd. may have disguised its debt levels to investors by temporarily slashing the debt it was carrying before publicly reporting its finances each quarter, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.
The activity, referred to in the financial industry as "window dressing," suggests that the troubled financial firm was shouldering more risk and using more borrowed funds to facilitate its trading than investors could easily detect from the firm's regulatory filings.
This comes as it emerged that MF Global, which filed for bankruptcy protection amid questions about its bookkeeping and whether it had properly segregated customer funds, lobbied against a Commodity Futures Trading Commission proposal that would have placed tighter restrictions on how futures-trading firms can invest cash sitting in customer trading accounts.
MF Global Chief Executive Jon Corzine in July participated in a conference call with CFTC officials and strongly opposed the restrictions, saying they would hurt business. The CFTC proposal, which hasn't been voted on, is sure to gain greater scrutiny amid charges that MF Global's customer accounts are short by about $633 million.
MF Global and Mr. Corzine declined to comment.
In a congressional hearing Thursday, CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler said regulators are taking "all appropriate action" to get to the bottom of the shortfall.
For now, there is no indication that MF Global's investments of customer assets contributed to the discrepancy. People familiar with the investigation say MF Global may have taken cash from customer accounts to meet margin calls sparked by ratings downgrades and the declining value of its big bets on European government debt.
Still, the firm's aggressive approach to the issue speaks to its strong appetite for risk, even as European markets spiraled lower this summer.
But that appetite was not always completely apparent to investors. The Journal analysis shows that MF Global consistently had short-term borrowings that were much lower at the ends of its fiscal quarters than its average and peak levels for the full quarters.
In each of the past seven quarters, from late 2009 to mid-2011, MF Global's quarter-end borrowings were an average 16% lower than the quarterly average, according to the Journal's analysis. The quarter-end numbers were lower than the peak for each quarter by an average of 24%, according to the analysis.
Marketwatch's David Weidner details, in his weekly column, how investors were misled and burned for MF Global CEO Jon Corzine. Photo: KIMIHIRO HOSHINO/AFP/Getty Images
.For example, in 2010's third quarter, MF's short-term borrowings were listed as $18.7 billion when it reported to shareholders. During the quarter, however, those borrowings peaked at $28.4 billion—34% higher—and averaged $24.4 billion during the three-month period, according to the Journal analysis. Short-term borrowing typically pumps up risk-taking, allowing banks to make bigger trading bets.
Window dressing isn't illegal, but it can mask a financial institution's true levels of borrowing and risk-taking. That is an issue of particular concern with MF Global, where borrowings fueled large trades on European sovereign debt that helped lead to the firm's demise.
"Every quarter, seven quarters in a row, it's always lower," said Charles Mulford, an accounting professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "It sounds like they are actively managing their [borrowing] to see that the level is lower when they report to shareholders."
MF Global maintains its debt declined at the end of the quarters for legitimate reasons. The company has said in Securities and Exchange Commission filings that its borrowings fluctuate as part of "client facilitation activities" and market conditions.
An MF Global spokeswoman said the firm didn't lower its reported borrowings deliberately. In MF Global's view, the spokeswoman said, the firm's quarter-end numbers conveyed an accurate picture to investors of its level of risk and leverage.
Mr. Mulford said that explanation raised questions. "I'm left to wonder why client needs are always reduced at the end of the quarter," he said.
The SEC asked MF Global in March about its disclosures on its borrowings, according to correspondence between the agency and the firm. The SEC pushed the company to provide "more robust" explanations when its borrowings declined at the end of a reporting period, though it didn't specifically ask the firm about window dressing, the correspondence shows.
The firm provided additional detail on its borrowing in its annual report in May. MF Global also told the SEC in June that it would provide more disclosure in its securities filings in the future.
John Nester, an SEC spokesman, said the queries were part of a routine review of its filings. The SEC has asked similar questions of other financial institutions and wasn't targeting MF Global specifically, he said.
Investors and regulators grew concerned about window dressing last year, after a series of articles by The Wall Street Journal found such activity among "primary dealers," major banks and securities firms that trade directly with the Federal Reserve.
The Journal found that in 2009 and 2010, primary dealers as a group reduced a key form of short-term borrowing by an average of 42% at the end of fiscal quarters from the peak level during the same quarter. They then boosted those levels after the next quarter began. The borrowing was done through repurchase agreements, or "repos," which allow a firm to make big trading bets with borrowed money.
The figures for MF Global, not a primary dealer at the time of the previous Journal analysis, show a similar pattern.
More than a year ago, the SEC proposed a rule that would require companies to disclose more about their short-term borrowing, but has yet to take final action on the rule. Currently, banks are required to disclose their average borrowings only on an annual basis, and nonfinancial companies aren't required to disclose their average borrowings at all.
The CFTC proposal would restrict the percentage of total assets in segregated accounts a firm could invest in certain securities. Currently, there are no such limitations.
Since last July, MF Global officials participated in at least two calls and one in-person meeting with CFTC officials on the issue, according to records posted on the agency's website. In a Dec. 2, 2010, comment letter, jointly written with brokerage firm Newedge USA LLC, MF Global said the proposed restrictions were seeking to "fix something that is not broken."