Refco: A 21st Century Run On the Bank

Within a week, Refco went from “stockmarket darling to carcass”, said Daniel Gross on Slate.com. Last Monday, the firm was one of the world’s biggest futures and commodities brokers.

Within a week, Refco went from "stockmarket darling to carcass", said Daniel Gross on Slate.com. Last Monday, the firm was one of the world's biggest futures and commodities brokers. But early this week it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Last Tuesday, chairman and chief executive Phillip Bennett (see below) was charged with securities fraud for disguising a $430m debt he owed to the company. News of the accounting irregularity sent the shares into freefall and triggered a lawsuit from shareholders who had piled in at Refco's flotation in August. By Thursday, the group had halted operations at its prime brokerage, which serves hedge funds, and this week the shares were delisted from the main exchange.

Refco's financial position had arguably improved early last week, since Bennett paid the loan back, said David Wighton in the FT. The trouble was that the company said its accounts for the past four years could not be relied on as a result of the discovery. The resulting loss of confidence was fatal because if a broker's customers and depositors, who lend and deposit billions, fear for their assets, they will withdraw them.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.