How serious is the speculation that former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine will end up going to join the Obama administration, perhaps as Tim Geithner’s replacement as Treasury Secretary? Serious enough that his current employer has to price the potential move into its products!
MF Global Holdings Ltd. took the cult of the Wall Street chief executive officer to a new level with a plan to sell bonds that pay a higher rate if Chairman and CEO Jon Corzine quits to take a job from the U.S. president.
The futures broker is selling $300 million in five-year unsecured notes, said a person familiar with the offering who declined to be identified because the terms aren’t final. The notes will pay an extra percentage point of interest if Corzine is named to a federal post and confirmed by the Senate before July 2013, New York-based MF Global said in a regulatory filing.
“That seems crazy,” said William Larkin, a fixed-income portfolio manager who oversees $500 million at Cabot Money Management Inc. in Salem, Massachusetts, and has 22 years of experience. “I’ve never heard of something like this.”
Corzine, the 64-year-old former governor of New Jersey, helped run Goldman Sachs Group Inc. from 1994 to 1999 and served in the Senate from 2001 to 2006.
Well, that’s reassuring. We all remember what a swell job Corzine did in protecting the interests of taxpayers in his last job, right?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=kHnsJYft8Io
Sigh. Yeah.
Just the man to run the Treasury Department in times like these – a guy who left a record $8 billion budget deficit in his last job.