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Happy returns to some Madoff investors
By Ian Katz |
January 8, 2009, Thursday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
INVESTORS who lost money in Bernard Madoff's alleged US$50-billion fraud might begin recovering some of their funds as soon as next month, Securities Investor Protection Corp President Stephen Harbeck said.
"You're talking about unscrambling an egg," Harbeck said in an interview on Tuesday. First payouts from the investor protection fund could occur in "a month or two" if the cash isn't difficult to trace, Harbeck said. Other customers will have to wait for months, he said, declining to be more specific.
SIPC, a Washington-based group funded by member broker-dealers, acts as a trustee or works with court-appointed trustees to recover funds in missing-asset cases.
SIPC's funds cover securities and cash claims of as much as US$500,000 a customer, including up to US$100,000 in cash.
The Madoff case "is of a completely different order of magnitude" from anything SIPC, set up to protect small investors, has seen before, Harbeck said. The group has US$1.6 billion in assets, US$1 billion in credit available from the US Treasury and another credit line from an international consortium of banks.
Harbeck said he doesn't know if SIPC will need to ask the Treasury or Congress for additional money, or whether resolving the Madoff losses will wipe out the group's funds. Since an investor with a US$100-million claim is limited to US$500,000, the claims "might not necessarily exhaust our resources," he said.
SIPC doesn't have a "fraction of what they need" to reimburse Madoff investors, Thomas Orecchio, chairman of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors until September, said in a January 5 interview. "It's not going to go very far."
The trustee handling the liquidation of Madoff's firm last week mailed about 8,000 claim forms to people who appeared to have invested with him in the past year and others on at least one mailing list, Harbeck said. The number of people thought to have been actual customers in the past year is "in the thousands," Harbeck said.
"You're talking about unscrambling an egg," Harbeck said in an interview on Tuesday. First payouts from the investor protection fund could occur in "a month or two" if the cash isn't difficult to trace, Harbeck said. Other customers will have to wait for months, he said, declining to be more specific.
SIPC, a Washington-based group funded by member broker-dealers, acts as a trustee or works with court-appointed trustees to recover funds in missing-asset cases.
SIPC's funds cover securities and cash claims of as much as US$500,000 a customer, including up to US$100,000 in cash.
The Madoff case "is of a completely different order of magnitude" from anything SIPC, set up to protect small investors, has seen before, Harbeck said. The group has US$1.6 billion in assets, US$1 billion in credit available from the US Treasury and another credit line from an international consortium of banks.
Harbeck said he doesn't know if SIPC will need to ask the Treasury or Congress for additional money, or whether resolving the Madoff losses will wipe out the group's funds. Since an investor with a US$100-million claim is limited to US$500,000, the claims "might not necessarily exhaust our resources," he said.
SIPC doesn't have a "fraction of what they need" to reimburse Madoff investors, Thomas Orecchio, chairman of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors until September, said in a January 5 interview. "It's not going to go very far."
The trustee handling the liquidation of Madoff's firm last week mailed about 8,000 claim forms to people who appeared to have invested with him in the past year and others on at least one mailing list, Harbeck said. The number of people thought to have been actual customers in the past year is "in the thousands," Harbeck said.
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