Another White-Collar Robbery Term To Learn Before It All Comes Crashing Down: ''RE-HYPOTHECATION'' [View all]
Remember life before you ever knew what a derivative, a subprime mortgage, a credit default obligation or what high frequency trading was? Well here's a new financial (white-collar robbery) term for us to learn: RE-HYPOTHECATION.
[font size=4]MF Global And The Great Wall Street Re-hypothecation Scandal[/font]
Thomson Reuters - News & Insight
12/7/2011
By Christopher Elias (UK)
(Business Law Currents) A legal loophole in international brokerage regulations means that few, if any, clients of MF Global are likely to get their money back. Although details of the drama are still unfolding, it appears that MF Global and some of its Wall Street counterparts have been actively and aggressively circumventing U.S. securities rules at the expense (quite literally) of their clients.
MF Global's bankruptcy revelations concerning missing client money suggest that funds were not inadvertently misplaced or gobbled up in MFs dying hours, but were instead appropriated as part of a mass Wall St manipulation of brokerage rules that allowed for the wholesale acquisition and sale of client funds through re-hypothecation. A loophole appears to have allowed MF Global, and many others, to use its own clients funds to finance an enormous $6.2 billion Eurozone repo bet.
If anyone thought that you couldnt have your cake and eat it too in the world of finance, MF Global shows how you can have your cake, eat it, eat someone elses cake and then let your clients pick up the bill. Hard cheese for many as their dough goes missing.
*snip*
RE-HYPOTHECATION
By way of background, hypothecation is when a borrower pledges collateral to secure a debt. The borrower retains ownership of the collateral but is hypothetically controlled by the creditor, who has a right to seize possession if the borrower defaults.
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- Instead of my usual pithy remark, I'll substitute the following:[/font]
[font color=blue]DeSwiss[/font]
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