"Top Priority"

Statement of Commissioner Bart Chilton Regarding the Importance of Protecting Customer Funds

December 1, 2011

One of the most important functions of my job is to ensure that customer funds are protected--when something like the MFGlobal debacle happens, I go into high gear. I have a specific goal, to push our staff to do anything and everything by using the full force of our federal authority to find, collect, and appropriately distribute back to rightful owners all customer funds.

In the current MFG matter, I am confident that our staff is doing just that. We are working on the side of customers--and no one else--to get their money bank. This is fundamental to the mission and purpose of our agency--if we don't do this, aggressively, completely, and promptly, we should get somebody else in place who will.

I also want to improve our current system to beef up, in a significant and meaningful way, our oversight of entities that have access to customer funds. I want to know that the public's money is where it's supposed to be, absolutely all the time.

I will continue--daily--to monitor the active oversight action of our staff’s activities in this matter. Right now, this is top on my agenda, and will continue to be so until we have a satisfactory resolution for customers whose money has been put at risk. I also intend to actively pursue any and all other alternatives to protect customer funds, such as an insurance fund for derivative investors. This is an idea whose time has come.

This top priority will continue until we find an answer first, to the MFG problem and second, to the issue of ensuring that this does not happen again to customers investing in derivatives transactions.

Last Updated: December 1, 2011