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Related: About this forumOn Eve of $41 Billion MF Global Bankruptcy Filing, Jon Corzine Was Château Shopping in France
On Eve of $41 Billion MF Global Bankruptcy Filing, Jon Corzine Was Château Shopping in Franceby Vanity Fair
In an exclusive report from three of Vanity Fairs premier business writerscontributing editors Bryan Burrough, William D. Cohan, and Bethany McLeanthe February issue delivers a sprawling account of the personal and professional battles of Jon Corzine, the former Goldman Sachs C.E.O. and ex-politician whose helming of MF Global resulted in a notorious $41 billion filing for bankruptcy and a $1 billion loss in firm equity. According to the piece, for the fiscal year that ended in March 2011, MF Global recorded day-one gains of $85 million on the former New Jersey governors risky trades on European sovereign debt and other assets, thanks to an accounting ploy. Because there were barely any expenses associated with such trades, the gains were almost pure profit. Corzine would later tell investors that he made a $6.3 billion bet on sovereign debt, but the companys filings made it look like he had a much bigger long position at the end of June 2011$11.4 billion, offset by short positions of almost $5 billion, Vanity Fair reports. One analyst says: If those trades had not been there, MF Global would have been forced to sell or go out of business.
As federal authorities searched for the brokerage houses more than $1 billion in missing customer money, friends and former associates of Corzine weighed in on the ways his personal quirks informed his management style. On this, Jon became a zealot, one person says of Corzines European-debt trades. He managed the process soup to nuts, says a former employee. He knew every number back and forth. Hed talk to the accountants and the board. Hes not a detail-oriented guy, but on this he knew every detail.
I think he is the most competitive guy in the world, says a person who was close to him at MF Global, explaining why Corzine took the job in the first placedespite prime opportunities both on Wall Street and in Washington, where he was frequently invoked as a possible Treasury-secretary successor to Timothy Geithner. He knows there are people out there who dont like him, and he wants to prove them wrong. Hes very focused on reputation and how hes perceived. He wants to be perceived as a winner, and he will do what it takes to get there. Says a former colleague, He wanted to be in the game, to prove he was back, to prove he was the man.
There are a lot of us who consider Jon to be a friend and mentor, says a former Goldmanite. That group is horrified <by the scandal>. He continues: There is another group who thinks this is par for the course. At first I thought, Oh, Jon must be crushed, says one person who knows him well. Its not like he was doing this [playing the accounting games] to earn a big bonus. But he needed to feed his ego that he would be perceived as being successful. And there are lot of people who are paying a much higher price than he is.
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On Eve of $41 Billion MF Global Bankruptcy Filing, Jon Corzine Was Château Shopping in France (Original Post)
girl gone mad
Jan 2012
OP
Demeter
(85,373 posts)1. Sounds like an Obituary to Me
IMV
hay rick
(7,640 posts)2. We got Chris Christie as governor instead.
American democracy ca. 2009.