"MF Global Had Us Angry, But This Time It's Personal"

My friends at Attain Capital are spitting mad about the betrayal at PFGBest, the Iowa-based futures broker they had custodianed their client money at…

This week’s newsletter was supposed to be a spotlight of one of our top ranked managers- a celebration of research, innovation, performance and risk management. Instead, we find ourselves staring at a blinking cursor on our screen with a mix of disbelief and rage.

When we originally penned our white paper, How to Save the Futures Industry, we had no idea that we would be staring down the same deficiencies less than a year later. Today we learned that PFGBest has had a customer fund shortfall amounting to approximately $220mm (perhaps dating back to 2010). As the story has unfolded, the details have been at turns nauseating and infuriating, as a web of deceit unravels before our eyes.

MF Global had us angry, but this time, it’s personal. Our clients have money with PFGBest. We have money with PFGBest. We were misled by senior leadership that we trusted in business. We were let down by regulators. We were failed by our government.

Enough is enough. Here, we’ll break down what we know so far, the possibilities on the horizon, and the swift, decisive action necessary to keep this travesty from becoming the final nail in the coffin of a marketplace that serves as a heartbeat of our global economy. Because, to borrow a phrase from Captain John Paul Jones, we have not yet begun to fight.

Keep Reading:

PFGBest: Broken Promises, Shattered Trust (Attain Capital)