Doing for himself what he did for New Jersey.

Corzine’s MF Global files for bankruptcy

By MARK DeCAMBRE

Besieged broker MF Global filed bankruptcy today after a frantic effort over the weekend by CEO John Corzine to strike an out-of-bankruptcy sale came up short.

MF Global had a tentative deal to sell assets to Interactive Brokers Group as of late Sunday, but the agreement fell apart as talks continued overnight, people familiar with the matter said. Discussions ended around 5 a.m. Eastern Time, one of these people said.

MF Global had been considering filing just its holding company for bankruptcy protection and then executing the sale. That plan is now off the table, one of the people said. This person said MF Global's parent company would be included in the bankruptcy filing.

Voluntary bankruptcy petitions for MF Global Holdings Ltd. and MF Global Finance USA Inc. hit the docket in a US bankruptcy court in Manhattan mid-morning Monday.

The New York Federal Reserve said that it suspended new business with the futures trading company until it establishes that it is "fully capable" of performing its duties as a primary broker. It is one of 22 primary brokers at the New York Fed.

Additionally, the InterContinental Exchange limited MF Global customers to unwinding positions and said it will no longer recognize the company or its divisions as a guarantor. MF Global is a major player in the futures markets, so the news had an outsized effect on futures trading.

In its bankruptcy filing with the Federal Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, it listed JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank as its biggest creditors.

The company reported a quarterly loss of $192 million last week and has seen its shares plunge more than 60 percent since then.

The bankruptcy ended one of the most harrowing weekends on Wall Street since Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15, 2008 imploded on worries that it was choking on toxic mortgage debt.

Three years later, Corzine — a former Goldman Sachs CEO — was pounding the phones this past weekend in an attempt to secure a white knight to purchase all or parts of MF Global after concerns about the broker-dealer’s exposures to some $6.3 billion in European sovereign debt decimated its shares in a wild week off trader for the firm that saw it lose three-quarters of its equity value.

For Corzine, 64, the bankruptcy is another knock on his reputation after choosing to dial up European risk at MF Global when other larger firms had grown weary.

Corzine is not expected to stay on at MF Global — an embarrassing outcome for a Wall Street titan who led Goldman Sachs before being ousted in 1999.

Corzine had hoped to strike a deal with a number of firms, including Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs, Australian financial institution Macquarie Group and others, to purchase all or parts of the firm, sources noted.

However, few of the firms appeared willing to embrace fresh risk given the markets jitteriness around Europe and regulators weren't keen either, sources say.

Even during the firm’s hectic weekend shotgun deal making, Corzine held out that his bets on Europe only needed time to bear fruit and believes that the market worries around the broker dealers is overblown.

The heat on Corzine’s firm came to a head after the firm reported a record loss on Sept. 26 followed by a series of downgrades from major rating agencies Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch took its debt down to junk-bond levels the following day.