Refco Meltdown fka RFC

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CBOT Holdings Inc. plans to offer 3.19 million shares at an estimated price of $45 to $49 a share, in a bid to raise about $150 million with underwriters CS First Boston, J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Keefe Bruyette & Woods and Sandler O'Neill & Partners.

IPO trader Sal Morreale of Cantor Fitzgerald said he's seeing enough interest to get the CBOT IPO done, but the deal has cooled somewhat from the feverish pitch he saw prior to the scandal at Refco (RFX:

"It's a case of industry problems affecting the IPO," Morreale said. "The IPO is less than 4 million shares, so there's not a lot of stock to go around."

He added that he expects less than the $10 to $20 pop he forecasted in the IPO two weeks ago.


Refco's Falling House of Cards
By W.D. Crotty (TMFWD40)
October 14, 2005

Refco (NYSE: RFX), one of the largest clearing firms for derivatives, has turned into a falling house of cards.


http://www.fool.com/news/mft/2005/mft05101426.htm?source=eptyholnk303100&logvisit=y&npu=y&am...


Yesterday, Refco imposed a 15-day moratorium on all activities of its offshore securities and foreign-exchange subsidiary, Refco Capital Markets Ltd. While the company said Thursday that capital accounts at its two regulated U.S. operations, Refco LLC and Refco Securities LLC, were unaffected by the scandal, on Friday it began to unwind customer and client positions at the latter.

Traders said Refco Securities is the smaller of the two U.S. divisions, but Friday's move sowed more doubts about the parent's continued solvency.

In a statement Thursday, the CME said Refco LLC has met all of its obligations and remains in good standing, but said it was restricting the company from withdrawing capital without the exchange's permission.

Judging by the action in the stock, not everyone feels that it is business as usual at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Some traders even feel that the shuttering of Refco Capital Markets is a signal that the top is here for commodity prices.


http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/markets/mikemarino/10247447.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm...