MF Global Holdings Ltd. found out in recent days that about $659 million of its customer segregated accounts resided in an account at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., according to a person familiar with the matter.
The information was conveyed to the securities firm in recent days. The information is as of Oct. 31, the day MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection, the person said.
It is unclear whether the money at J.P. Morgan is directly tied to about $600 million that regulators say is missing from MF Global customer accounts.
J.P. Morgan acted as MF Global’s custodial bank and housed the firm’s client balances, according to the person. The news of the money at J.P. Morgan was earlier reported by Bloomberg News.
As a clearing bank, J.P. Morgan received the money after MF Global sold billions of dollars in assets last week. MF Global officials believed that the proceeds from some of those trades were stuck at J.P. Morgan when the firm filed for bankruptcy on Monday. A spokeswoman for J.P. Morgan had no immediate comment.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in missing customer money helped scuttle a potential acquisition of MF Global by Interactive Brokers Group Inc. early Monday.
Later, officials at the CME Group Inc., the large futures exchange operator, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) estimated the amount of missing customer money at about $600 million.
Investigators are looking into how the customer money was lost, where it went and who knew about it. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is also looking into whether CEO Jon Corzine or MF Global made misleading statements about its health before it collapsed late last month.
The announcement of the J.P. Morgan account comes hours after Corzine resigned from the securities firm, which filed for bankruptcy protection Monday amid concerns about its European bond exposure.
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