What ever happened to "our employees are our most important
resource"...?

That and $600 million dollars.

TMT


MF Global fires brokerage staff en masse
By Clare Baldwin, Greg Roumeliotis and Sam Nelson | Reuters - 7 hrs
ago

NEW YORK/CHICAGO (Reuters) - MF Global fired all 1,066 of its
brokerage employees on Friday, triggering anger and resentment about
the firm's collapse after bad bets on European debt under former CEO
Jon Corzine's leadership.

How the abrupt, final blow was delivered upset many staff -- with some
learning by e-mail and others through news on the television.

"Fifteen years and no severance!" shouted one angry MF Global employee
as he left the firm's offices on 5th Avenue in Manhattan after hugging
the receptionist and doorman.

The trustee in charge of liquidating the brokerage said in a statement
that the workers were let go immediately, though they will be paid
through November 15 and up to 200 will be rehired to help with the
wind-down.

The timing couldn't be worse for the employees. Not only is the U.S.
unemployment rate high at 9 percent, other Wall Street firms have been
firing staff in recent months as trading profits decline and tighter
regulation takes hold.

"The lives of so many people have been disrupted. We did not even get
told individually, we got a group e-mail," said MF Global analyst
Pierre-Yvan Desparois outside the company's offices in Manhattan.

"The company had a lot of potential, it did not have to end like this.
I'm a credit analyst and I could have told Corzine not to invest 100
percent in the sovereign debt situation. He placed bets with people's
lives," said Desparois.

A middle-aged man who said he had worked for MF Global for 23 years
but who declined to give his name left another of the firm's New York
offices wearing a black t-shirt over his collared shirt that was laced
with profanity.

At the Chicago Board of Trade, one MF Global employee sat in silence
after a Reuters reporter told her about the mass layoffs. "No, I
hadn't heard yet," she said, after a moment.

Asked about colleagues who were let go earlier this week, she said
some have put on a brave face about landing another job. "But I told
them, this is totally different because people are finding it hard to
find jobs for 12, 18 months."

The criticism of Corzine was echoed by Todd Thielmann, a broker with
MF Global in Chicago.

"His ego has ruined a lot of lives," said Thielmann. "It was more
about the execs at the company than the grunts."

Another employee who worked in market data at the firm in New York for
three years said she would have never left. "It was a great job. The
camaraderie, the company was great. But people at the top let us down.
It came as a complete shock," she said.

Not every employee saw the pink slip e-mail, and not everyone was
surprised.

A broker in Chicago learned about the termination through news reports
and said employees were being called into meetings as the media began
reporting the development.

"When you are working for a company that is bankrupt, you know it's
coming," said an MF Global broker who attended a 20-minute meeting in
New York.

MONEY STILL MISSING

The firings come as the trustee, James Giddens, works to identify and
locate the brokerage's assets, including $600 million in missing
customer money that has frustrated and confused commodity-market
traders.

MF Global's main U.S. exchange regulator, CME Group Inc, said on
Friday it will provide a $300 million guarantee to prod the trustee
into releasing frozen customer funds. For the first time, CME tapped a
slush fund for about $50 million to help offset any losses to futures
traders stemming from the failure.

Giddens is trying to account for all of MF Global's assets with help
from forensics investigators at Ernst & Young. The trustee said he has
also retained Deloitte to help with the transfer of about 17,000
commodities accounts worth roughly $1.5 billion.

Federal agencies, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission,
the Securities & Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice,
are investigating whether the money missing from customer accounts may
have been improperly mixed with the firm's funds.

Giddens was appointed to liquidate the brokerage after MF's parent
company declared bankruptcy on October 31.

The bankruptcy shocked Wall Street, in part because the company was
run by former New Jersey Governor and Goldman Sachs head Jon Corzine,
who advocated for tough regulations on Wall Street firms during his
political career.

Corzine resigned last week, saying he would not seek about $9 million
in severance.

SOME WILL BE REHIRED

Between 150 and 200 of the MF Global brokerage employees will be
rehired to help with winding down the business and processing
bankruptcy claims, Giddens said in his statement.

"The termination of employees and closure of operations is a necessary
part of the court-ordered liquidation ... and is consistent with the
trustee's obligations," he said.

The parent, MF Global Holdings, said in a statement that it was
"saddened by the trustee's actions today to terminate so many of our
colleagues."

Giddens also said on Friday that his team is working to clear out the
brokerage's New York offices as soon as possible and rent smaller,
less expensive space as the liquidation moves forward.

MF Global's Chicago offices will continue to be leased for an
undetermined amount of time, he said.

As for the employees, they are heading off into the great unknown.

"We were down to eight people on the floor and only two of them have
found jobs," said Thielmann, who plans to start over as an independent
broker in the corn options pit trading floor of the CBOT.

"I'm on my own now but it's going to be really hard to get customers.
They're scared, they've taken any excess money out of all firms now
and they don't know who to trust. Customers are pulling funds out of
accounts, that's bad for liquidity and bad for markets," he said.

The brokerage liquidation is In re MF Global Inc, U.S. Bankruptcy
Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-2790.

MF's bankruptcy case is In re MF Global Holdings Ltd, in the same
court, No. 11-15059.

(Additional reporting by Nick Brown, Dan Wilchins and Jonathan Spicer
in New York; and Theopolis Waters, Ann Saphir and T. Arasu in Chicago;
Writing by Edward Tobin; Editing by Martha Graybow, John Wallace, Tim
Dobbyn and Bernard Orr)

On Fri, 11 Nov 2011 23:11:07 -0800 (PST), Too_Many_Tools
wrote:

"I'm on my own now but it's going to be really hard to get customers.
They're scared, they've taken any excess money out of all firms now
and they don't know who to trust. Customers are pulling funds out of
accounts, that's bad for liquidity and bad for markets," he said.

And that is why these fraudsters need to be criminally prosecuted:
they are a danger to the entire system.
Dave

On Fri, 11 Nov 2011 23:11:07 -0800 (PST), Too_Many_Tools
wrote:

"I'm on my own now but it's going to be really hard to get customers.

Try using deoderant, and wipe the cum off your chin before any face to
face meetings.