MF Global UK administrators will take US arm to court

KPMG administrators to MF Global UK are set to take the US arm of the collapsed investment bank to court over a $700m (£434.2m) claim.

Richard Fleming, Richard Heis and Mike Pink, partners at KPMG, were appointed joint special administrators of MF Global UK in November.

Pink said in a statement: “The involvement of the court is likely to be required to decide various contentious issues thrown up by the case. MF Global Inc’s $700m claim against MF Global UK’s segregated pot, which we dispute, is now set to be decided in court.”

The administrators also highlighted a recent Lehman brothers Supreme Court judgment will affect the dividend payments to creditors of MF Global.

The decision means that all clients, whose monies were either segregated or should have been segregated, will have a claim against the client money pot irrespective of whether the company segregated their funds as was previously thought.

The Supreme Court ruling will mean that the creditor pot at MF Global UK will need to be shared between the creditors that should have had their funds segregated.

“Following the Supreme Court judgment on Lehman, it is also likely that we will need further court guidance on tracing assets and monies and adding them to the segregated pool,” said Pink.

“This could involve a forensic review of MF Global UK’s 250 non-segregated accounts. As this issue affects both Lehman and MF Global UK we will liaise with the Lehman administrators, with the aim of mitigating the costs of this exercise and to maximise efficiency across both cases.”