MF Global’s top lawyer is expected to break her five-month silence on Wednesday to tell Congress that she was unaware of a gaping shortfall in customer money until hours before the brokerage firm filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 31 NY Times’ Dealbook reports.
Laurie Ferber, MF Global’s general counsel, was expected to tell a House panel that she “had no reason to believe” that the firm had raided customer accounts to meet its own obligations, according to a copy of her prepared testimony. While Ms. Ferber learned of a shortfall in customer money in the afternoon of Oct. 30, she said she believed it to be an accounting error.
“My impression throughout the afternoon and late into the evening was that the apparent deficit was a reconciliation issue and did not represent an actual shortfall in customer funds,” she planned to tell the oversight panel of the House Financial Services Committee.
Ferber, who previously worked at Drexel Burnham Lambert and Goldman Sachs, is a central figure in the collapse of MF Global and the ensuing hunt for more than $1 billion in missing money. As legal counsel, she helped oversee attempts to sell MF Global as it careened toward failure and advised the firm on a dispute over a crucial transfer of money to JPMorgan Chase. That transfer contained customer money, a fact that MF Global officials have said that they did not know at the time….
Read more at http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/mf-globals-top-lawyer-will-break-her-silence/?ref=global
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