如何拯救明富环球

    期货经纪公司明富环球（MF Global）命悬一线。公司高管们正努力说服客户相信，它不会成为下一个贝尔斯登（Bear Stearns）或雷曼兄弟 （Lehman Brothers）。但在经纪交易商的世界中，信心和认知是至关重要的。如果有足够多的人认为你即将倒下——无论这种看法是对还是错——这场游戏就会飞速终结。倘若外界对这家公司偿付能力的看法在未来几天内没有改观，该公司雄心勃勃的首席执行官，华尔街响当当的人物乔恩•柯赛就只得面临两个选择：减价出售或破产倒闭。

    明富环球正迅速采取行动，以避免危机。一位知情人士向《财富》杂志(Fortune)透露，该公司董事会上周二早上决定聘请精品投资银行Evercore帮助其探索“战略选择”。这则由《华尔街日报》(Wall Street Journal)于上周三早上率先披露的消息似乎稳住了股价。此前，关于该公司偿付能力的谣言如野火般在市场上疯狂蔓延，导致公司股价在上周早些时候下跌了50%。

    为恢复市场信心并继续获得信贷支持，明富环球亟需利用一切可利用的途径迅速募集一些新鲜的资本。如果手头没有现金，它就无法为其客户促成交易，也无法满足其自营业务追加保证金的要求。虽然MF Global声称在第三季度末依然拥有约37亿美元的可用流动资金，但后来这笔钱可能已经消耗殆尽。

    看看这家公司的杠杆率，保留资本的紧迫性就变得格外明晰。过去一年中，公司损失了9千多万美元，市值下跌了近80%，跌至2.8亿美元。据评级机构伊根•琼斯（Egan Jones）测算，MF Global的欧洲主权债务敞口为63亿美元，再加上所有的美国政府债务敞口，该公司的整体杠杆率约为40比1。这个数字甚至比雷曼兄弟公司于2008年破产时的杠杆率（约为35比1）还要高。如此高的杠杆率使得投资者极度紧张，即使其中很大一部分是相对良性的政府机构债务。

    8月份，明富环球开始减少自营交易活动，以降低风险，筹措资金。但它很可能正坐在一个定时炸弹上，但是没有人知道它何时会爆炸。对于一家经纪交易商来说，这种不确定性是致命的。

潜在买家

    但尽管存在这种高杠杆率和不确定性，明富环球继续生存下去的救赎之道还是有的。首先是被动获得外界的资本注入，代价是交出公司的部分权益。源自石油资源丰富的国家（如迪拜)和炼油中心（如新加坡）的主权财富基金此前就曾投资过陷入困境的金融公司。明富环球在石油交易领域颇具影响力的大宗商品交易平台可能会对这些基金产生吸引力。乔恩•柯赛曾在上世纪90年代执掌高盛公司（Goldman Sachs），并在本世纪头十年担任美国参议员和新泽西州长，他与这些海外基金关系良好，有可能会迅速行动促成一笔交易。

    The fate of MF Global hangs in the balance as the firm's executives scramble to reassure customers that it won't be the next Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers. But in the broker-dealer world, confidence and perception are critical, and if enough people believe you're going under, rightly or wrongly, the game is over – fast. Unless perceptions about the firm's solvency change in the next few days, Jon Corzine, MF Global's ambitious and Wall Street-famous chief executive, will face just two options: fire sale or bankruptcy.

    Acting quickly to avert a meltdown, MF Global's board retained the boutique investment bank Evercore Tuesday morning to help it explore "strategic options," a person with knowledge of the situation tells Fortune. The news, first reported in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday morning, seems to have stabilized the company's stock, which had fallen earlier in the week by as much as 50%, as rumors to its solvency spread through the market like wildfire.

    To restore confidence and to keep its credit lines open, MF Global (MF) needs to quickly raise some fresh capital by whatever means available. Without cash on hand, the firm can't facilitate trades for its clients or meet margin calls for its own proprietary trades. While the firm claims it had some $3.7 billion in available liquidity as of the end of the third quarter, that cash may have since dried up.

    The urgency to retain capital becomes clear when you look at the firm's leverage ratio. In the last year the company has lost over $90 million while its market capitalization fell around 80% to around $280 million. Taking into account its $6.3 billion in European sovereign debt exposure, along with all its US government agency debt exposure, the firm has a leverage ratio of around 40 to 1, according to Egan Jones, a rating agency. That's even higher than the approximate 35 to 1 leverage ratio Lehman Brothers was sporting when it fell from grace in 2008. Such a high leverage ratio makes investors extremely nervous, even if a large portion of that leverage ends up being relatively benign government agency debt.

    In August, MF Global began to wind down some of its prop trading activities to reduce risk and raise cash, but it could be sitting on a time bomb that no one knows about. Such uncertainty is a killer for a broker-dealer.

Possible buyers

    But despite the high leverage ratio and uncertainty, there are options available to MF Global to continue as a going concern. The first would be some sort of passive capital infusion in exchange for a piece of the company. Sovereign wealth funds from oil-rich countries like Dubai and oil-refining hubs like Singapore have made investments in struggling financial companies before and may be tempted to get their hands on MF Global's commodity trading platform, which has a strong presence in oil trading. Corzine, who was the head of Goldman Sachs (GS) in the 1990s and a U.S. Senator and Governor from New Jersey in the 2000s, has strong relationships with foreign funds and could move quickly to seal a deal.