Der frühere Generaldirektor der BAWAG, Helmut Elsner, ist am Donnerstag in Frankreich verhaftet worden. Elsner wurde heute Mittag in seiner südfranzösischen Villa wegen "Fluchtgefahr" verhaftet und wird die Nacht über in einem französischen Gefängnis verbringen. Elsner hatte sich zuletzt unter Verweis auf Gesundheitsprobleme Einvernahmen in Wien entzogen. Morgen soll er einem Haftrichter vorgeführt werden. Das bestätigte Christoph Pöchinger, der Sprecher von Justizministerin Karin Gastinger, am Donnerstagabend auf Anfrage der APA. Ein Auslieferungsantrag war am Abend in Vorbereitung. In spätestens 14 Tagen wollen die österreichischen Behörden den Ex-Banker in Wien haben.

tirol.com/wirtschaft/national/45575/index.do

Etwa 350 Mio US$ wurden vom Wolfi anscheinend mit Optionen auf Dollar/Yen verzockt. Der Yen lief wohl in die falsche Richtung bzw. fiel erst 2 Monate nach Auslaufen der Option(en). Wer es genauer weiss bzw. darstellen kann, darf das hier gerne tun.

Ein Kabinett des Grauens ...

networld.at/nw1/redir.php?nnwF…wag/ev_elsner_floettl.pdf

Thursday July 27, 4:56 pm ET

Refco to Close Foreign Exchange Unit After Deal Is Cancelled

biz.yahoo.com/ap/060727/refco_forex_unit.html?.v=1

150 USD plus Rabattprogramm:

biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060630/laf040.html?.v=57

As noted above, it is possible that the Bankruptcy court will have a different view on this issue than that of RFXA. Therefore, customers who continued to trade on RefcoFX.com cannot be assured that if their account balances have declined since October 17, 2005, they would not be required to compensate the bankruptcy estate for trading losses or that if their account balances have increased since October 17, 2005, they would recover the full amount of the gain reflected in their account statements

Im Ultra Worst Case müssen RefcoFX Kunden also sogar noch Geld an die Refco Gläubiger zahlen ?

refcofx.com/refco-info-2.htm

Friday May 19, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) - In the race to retrieve assets lost in Refco Inc.'s meltdown last year, some of Wall Street's biggest investment houses worry they are falling behind.

So far, a committee of Refco's creditors has dominated the race. It has retrieved $263 million (euro205.95 million) from a collapsing hedge fund linked to Refco, the commodities brokerage firm that collapsed amid an accounting scandal in October. The committee persuaded a judge to freeze up to $1.3 billion (euro1 billion) in assets of Bawag P.S.K Group, Austria's fourth-largest bank, which it accused of being "partners in crime'' in the alleged fraud conspiracy that precipitated Refco's collapse.

Moreover, lawyers for some of the Wall Street investment houses say U.S. prosecutors are also making headway in securing agreements for the repayment of lost Refco funds. Such settlements, the Wall Street firms fear, could leave little for them to recover. In the last few days several investment powerhouses - including Pacific Investment Management Co., the world's biggest fixed-income investor, and Merrill Lynch & Co. - have complained separately in court papers that they feel they are at a disadvantage.

PIMCO, which is leading a class-action lawsuit against Refco on behalf of bondholders and shareholders, said court restrictions limiting its access to important Refco documents have hamstrung its recovery efforts. It said it fears falling "further behind other interested parties who are exploiting their access to millions of pages of highly relevant documents to pursue their own agendas concerning Refco's stunning collapse.''

Separately, Merrill Lynch asked a bankruptcy judge in Manhattan to deny or at least delay approval of the $263 million (euro205.95 million) settlement obtained by Refco's creditors from Sphinx Managed Futures Fund SPC, the hedge fund with connections to Refco. It contended the settlement was reached "at the literal expense'' of Merrill and other Sphinx investors, including Raymond James & Associates and Rydex Capital Partners LLC.

The freezing of the assets of the Austrian bank heightened the anxieties of a broad spectrum of investors affected by the Refco debacle, court documents show. Within days of the freeze, the bank said it intended to settle the Refco creditors' lawsuit. The Austrian government quickly offered the bank a euro900 million bailout to aid the settlement.

In papers filed with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, PIMCO and the class-action plaintiffs said the Refco creditors' success reflected a "yawning information gap'' that favored them against the class-action plaintiffs.

That information, the creditors have said, included confidential e-mails indicating a fraud conspiracy between Refco and Bawag. PIMCO said the information permitted the creditors "to extract a significant settlement from a financially strapped defendant - Bawag.'' It said additional settlements are expected soon that could do further harm to investors involved in the class-action lawsuit.

PIMCO said the U.S. prosecutors in Manhattan are "reportedly close'' to reaching a settlement that could "exhaust Bawag's ability to pay any other claims.'' Even if a portion of that settlement is allocated to the class-action plaintiffs, it said, the class-action plaintiffs have no way to assess whether the deal is good for them.

"The ability of lead plaintiffs to assess any such proposal ... is seriously hampered by the lack of access to any of the documents that were undoubtedly scrutinized by every other party to the prospective deal,'' PIMCO said.

PIMCO asked a judge to grant it access to "all documents'' that Refco has provided or intends to provide to U.S. prosecutors, the creditors committee and the Securities and Exchange Commission. It also asked for the right to demand documents from third parties who provided information to the prosecutors, the SEC and the creditors committee.

Merrill Lynch, in papers filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, also said the Bawag freeze altered its prospects. Merrill affiliates had invested more than $17 million (euro13.31 million) in the Sphinx hedge fund, which had been launched in the late 1990s by a former Refco senior executive, Christopher Sugrue.

As Refco was collapsing, Sugrue badgered Refco executives into returning hundreds of millions of dollars in Sphinx funds that had been deposited at Refco. Refco's creditors committee sued to recover the money, saying the transfer had been unfair to other Refco creditors.

Sphinx initially put up a "half-baked'' defense and then simply caved when the committee threatened to bring new allegations linking a Sphinx director to the Bawag scandal, Merrill said in court papers. "Sphinx simply threw the fight in order to protect its own insiders,'' Merrill said.

Marc Dworsky, an attorney for Merrill, said in a court affidavit that after he learned that Sphinx intended to settle the Refco creditors' lawsuit, he sought an explanation from a Sphinx attorney, David Crichlow.

Crichlow mentioned the Bawag-related allegations against the Sphinx director as a contributing factor to the settlement, but would not elaborate, Dworsky said.

"But he did concede that neither (Crichlow's law firm) nor Sphinx had made any effort whatsoever to investigate the allegations because, as he put it,...'it wasn't worth the time, worry and expense of litigating the issue given the money that was certain to be available by way of the settlement','' Dworsky said.

Crichlow, an attorney with Pillsbury Winthrop LLP in New York, was not available for comment Thursday.-AP

© 1995-2005 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd (Co No 10894-D)

By Dan Wilchins Tue Apr 25, 3:55 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bankrupt broker Refco Inc. kicked off its auction of its photography collection on Tuesday, as it sells off works by artists including Richard Avedon and Andreas Gursky in a bid to raise money for creditors. The auction raised $1.93 million, more than the $1 million to $1.5 million expected, a spokesman for Christie's auction house said. The auction had been expected to bring in $5 million, but may now raise more for the company that owes creditors some $16.8 billion after collapsing in an accounting scandal. Refco began buying art in 1975, and started concentrating on photographs in the 1990s, just as collectors began paying real attention to the medium. The company's curator estimated the collection, once displayed at Refco's offices in New York and Chicago, cost the firm some $3.5 million. The commodities firm, founded in 1969, grew to be the biggest independent futures broker before seeking bankruptcy protection in October just a few months after a $583 million initial public offering.

Among the photographs sold on Tuesday was Joel Sternfeld's "McLean, Virginia, December 1978," which depicts a firefighter picking up a pumpkin at a farmer's market while firefighters battle flames in the background. The piece sold for $96,000. The highest profile works, including Andreas Gursky's "Avenue of the Americas," and Richard Avedon's "Andy Warhol, Artist, New York City, August 20, 1969," will be sold on May 5, with the balance going up for auction on May 10. The Refco collection contains some works that could be characterized as challenging, like Martha Rosler's "Bringing The War Home: House Beautiful," which features domestic suburban images superimposed on Vietnam War photos.

But Laura Miner, a former director of the art collections at Citibank and Morgan Guaranty, who now teaches a class on the business of art at New York University, said the collection rendered visits to Refco's headquarters memorable. "The works that were challenging were hung in such a way that they were not in your face. You could see them if you wanted to, but you didn't have to," said Miner, who viewed the photographs when they were displayed at Refco's World Trade Center offices. "The collection really made a difference in an otherwise anonymous space."

NEW YORK, March 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Forex Capital Markets LLC (FXCM) today announced that it has ended negotiations with the creditors of Refco, the bankrupt futures trader, to acquire the assets Refco FX Associates, Refco's unregulated currency trading operation.

"We have done everything in our power to rescue the clients of Refco FX Associates," said Drew Niv, chief executive officer of FXCM. "From the very beginning our purpose has been to make their 17,000 clients whole. If successful, our efforts would have meant that every one of the 17,000 Refco F/X customers would have been paid back in full."

In November 2005, FXCM agreed to acquire Refco F/X Associates for approximately $110 million, subject to an auction and to Bankruptcy Court approval. In February FXCM won the auction, since it was the only company that made an actual bid. Refco's creditors objected to FXCM's victory, claiming the price was too low. In an attempt to resolve objections to the sale of Refco F/X Associates to FXCM by a group of Refco creditors, FXCM raised its offer to $130 million, essentially bidding against itself to save the clients of Refco F/X Associates. Refco and its creditors remain unresponsive to FXCM.

"While our hope remains to effect a transaction, the creditors' demands remain unreasonable and their position inflexible," continued Mr. Niv. "They leave us no choice but to abandon negotiations at this time."

WASHINGTON — Refco Inc.'s creditors moved to block the sale of the company's foreign-exchange unit to an electronic currency-trading firm, saying the prospective buyer simply wants to "flip those assets to an outside investor at a huge profit."

In court papers, the creditors said Forex Capital Markets LLC shouldn't be permitted to buy Refco FX Associates LLC _ even though an attempted auction attracted no rival bids for the unit. They said Refco would be better off if it simply "wound down" Refco FX and put its "very valuable" 35 percent stake in Forex Capital Markets up for sale.

Forex Capital Markets, also known as FXCM, caters exclusively to online retail investors. Refco is a minority partner in the business. After Refco filed its Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition amid an accounting scandal last October, FXCM said it began to look for ways "of replacing Refco as a joint-venture partner."

FXCM offered $110 million for the Refco FX's assets _ including Refco's stake in FXCM _ but ran into opposition from Refco creditors. The delayed acquisition, it said in a letter to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan late Thursday, is hurting FXCM's business. In January alone, FXCM said it lost $13.7 million.

FXCM asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain to let the firm complete its purchase of Refco FX before an April 21 deadline. It said it needs "significant lead time to be prepared for a closing," and accused Refco's creditors of "attempting to use delay for tactical advantage."

Refco's creditors committee said FXCM's purchase offer was unacceptably low, and that it would provide only about $40 million in cash to Refco FX creditors.

Feb. 17, 2006, 3:09PM

© 2006 The Associated Press

NEW YORK, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Refco Inc. (RFXCQ.PK: Quote, Profile, Research), the bankrupt futures and commodities brokerage, said on Wednesday it has canceled the auction scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 16 of its foreign exchange assets.

In a statement, Refco said it canceled the auction for the online foreign exchange assets of its Refco FX Associates LLC unit because it had not received any bids other than the original offer by Forex Capital Markets LLC (FXCM).

A hearing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court scheduled for Friday Feb. 17 for the sale of the assets -- about 17,000 retail client accounts and a 35 percent stake in FXCM -- is expected to be postponed.

Refco said the creditors' committee in the Refco case and the agent for Refco's bank lenders have advised Refco they intend to object to the approval of the sale to FXCM and have requested more time. A new hearing date has not been set.