Jon Corzine

Jon Stevens Corzine ( KOR-zyne; born January 1, 1947) is an American financial executive and retired politician who served as a United States senator from New Jersey from 2001 to 2006, and the 54th governor of New Jersey from 2006 to 2010. Corzine ran for a second term as governor in 2009 but was defeated for re-election by Republican Chris Christie. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously worked at Goldman Sachs; after leaving politics, he was CEO of MF Global from 2010 until its collapse in 2011.

Corzine was born in Taylorville, Illinois, the son of Nancy June (née Hedrick) and Roy Allen Corzine, Jr. His grandfather Roy A. Corzine, Sr. served in the Illinois General Assembly. He grew up on a small family farm in Willey Station, Illinois near Taylorville. After completing high school at Taylorville High School, where he had been the football quarterback and basketball captain, he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and graduated in 1969, earning Phi Beta Kappa honors. While in college, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve and served from 1969 until 1975, attaining the rank of sergeant. In 1970, he enrolled in the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, from which he received a Master of Business Administration degree in 1973.

His first business experience was in the bond department of Continental Illinois National Bank, where he worked days while attending the Booth School of Business MBA program at night. He then moved to BancOhio National Bank, a regional bank in Columbus, Ohio, that was acquired in 1984 by National City Bank. Corzine worked at BancOhio until 1975, when he moved his family to New Jersey and was hired as a bond trader for Goldman Sachs.

In 1976, Corzine joined Goldman Sachs as a bond trader and then became co-manager of the Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities Division. He became a partner in 1980, and a member of the management committee in 1984. He served as Goldman Sachs' CFO (1991–1994), CEO (1994-1998) and a senior partner (1994–1999). During his leadership, Corzine oversaw the firm's expansion into Asia and was instrumental in leading the transition of the firm from a private partnership to a public company.

Corzine also chaired a presidential commission on capital budgeting for Bill Clinton and served as Chairman of the United States Department of the Treasury's borrowing committee. As the Goldman Sachs senior partner, he helped develop a private sector plan to rescue the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management when the leveraged fund's collapse in the fall of 1998 threatened contagion across the U.S. financial system. According to U.S. News & World Report, Corzine did not get along with co-CEO Henry Paulson, who came from the other major area of the bank, investment banking. When Corzine participated in structuring the bailout, Paulson seized control of the firm. When Goldman Sachs went public after Corzine's departure, Corzine made $400 million.

Corzine has participated in meetings of the Bilderberg Group, a network of leaders in the fields of politics, business and banking (1995–1997, 1999, 2003, and 2004). He is a former member of the group's steering committee.

After being forced out from Goldman Sachs in January 1999, Corzine launched a campaign for the New Jersey U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Frank Lautenberg. Despite initially trailing behind his opponent, former governor James Florio, in the Democratic primary by 30 percentage points, Corzine won the nomination by 16 points. He later attributed his successful primary run to pollster Bob Shrum who convinced him to run not as "a seasoned investment banker and job creator" but as a "liberal progressive". In the general election, Corzine won by just a three-point margin over his Republican opponent, four-term United States Congressman Bob Franks, in the November 2000 election. He was sworn into the Senate in January 2001.

He spent more than $62 million of his own money on his campaign, the most expensive Senate campaign in U.S. history – over $33 million of this was spent on the primary election alone, where he defeated former Governor James Florio 58–42%. Franks had been a last-minute choice because New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman had been expected to run for the Senate. The record $62 million amount surpassed Michael Huffington, who spent nearly $28 million in an unsuccessful 1994 Senate race.

During the campaign, Corzine refused to release his income tax return records. He claimed an interest in doing so, but he cited a confidentiality agreement with Goldman Sachs. Skeptics argued that Corzine should have followed the example of his predecessor Robert Rubin, who converted his equity stake into debt upon leaving Goldman.

Corzine campaigned for state government programs including universal health care, universal gun registration, mandatory public preschool, and more taxpayer funding for college education. He pushed affirmative action and same-sex marriage. David Brooks opined that Corzine was so liberal that his election, although the fact that his predecessor was also a Democrat, helped push the Senate to the left.

During Corzine's campaign for the United States Senate, he made some controversial off-color statements. When introduced to a man with an Italian name who said he was in the construction business, Corzine quipped: "Oh, you make cement shoes!" according to Emanuel Alfano, chairman of the Italian-American One Voice Committee. Alfano reported that when introduced to a lawyer named David Stein, Corzine said: "He's not Italian, is he? Oh, I guess he's your Jewish lawyer who is here to get the rest of you out of jail." Corzine denied mentioning religion, but did not deny the quip about Italians, stating that some of his own ancestors were probably Italian, or maybe French.

Corzine and his opponent, Republican Doug Forrester, spent $73 million on their gubernatorial campaigns by the week before election day. This included $38 million by Corzine and $19 million by Forrester for the general election. The primaries accounted for the difference. Since Corzine had spent over $62 million on his 2000 United States Senate elections, the combined expenditures for Corzine's run for the Senate and governorship exceeded $100 million. The main campaign issues were property taxes and the Bush administration. New Jersey had averaged $5,500 in 2004 property taxes, and Corzine tried to link his opponent to Bush.

The campaign for the post of Governor of New Jersey was successful with 54% of the vote. Forrester, a businessman and a former Mayor of West Windsor Township, in Mercer County, won 43%. Corzine received 1,224,493 votes to Forrester's 985,235. A total of 80,277 votes, or 3%, were scattered among other candidates. Corzine won 13 of New Jersey's 21 counties: Atlantic, Bergen, Burlington, Camden, Cumberland, Essex, Gloucester, Hudson, Mercer, Middlesex, Passaic, Salem, and Union. Corzine won the three most populous counties (Bergen, Essex, and Middlesex), five of the top six, and seven of the top nine.

Corzine ran for re-election in the 2009 New Jersey gubernatorial election. In January 2009, Rasmussen Reports indicated that recently announced Republican challenger Chris Christie led Corzine 42% to 40%. Other polls that month showed Corzine with approvals of 46% to 40%, but these were trailing his "favorables", which were just 42–44%. By June and July, a number of polls showed Corzine trailing the Republican nominee, Christie, by double digits, though the tide changed again and by October polls showed Corzine was close, and in some cases, ahead. In the end, Corzine lost the race to Christie by a margin of 48.5% to 44.9%, with 5.8% of the vote going to independent candidate Chris Daggett.

Corzine officially declined his $175,000 salary in 2006.

After taking office in January 2006, Corzine's approval numbers were very low. Many polls seemed to indicate that much of this negative polling was a result of the protracted budget battle ahead of the 2006 New Jersey State Government shutdown in July. An April 26, 2006, poll from Quinnipiac University Polling Institute showed Corzine at a 35% approval with a 42% disapproval. A February 28, 2007, poll from Quinnipiac University showed Corzine at 50% approval with 34% disapproval. When Corzine released a controversial plan to monetize the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway, his approval rating fell to 30% in January 2008.

In conjunction with this fall in approval rating, an initiative to recall the Governor was started for the first and only time ever in New Jersey history. The recall effort failed after gathering less than the required 1.2 million signatures.

Corzine had long insisted that state employees must bear part of the cost of their health benefits after retirement. As of July 1, 2007, in agreements with the Communications Workers of America, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, active State employees in those unions (as well as certain other non-union employees) are now required to contribute 1.5% of their salary to offset health care costs. State and local employees' contributions to the two largest pension systems increased by 10%, from 5% to 5.5% of their annual salaries and increased the retirement benefit age for new public employees, from 55 to 60 years. In 2008, Corzine approved a law that increased the retirement age from 60 to 62, required that government workers and teachers earn $7,500 per year to qualify for a pension, eliminated Lincoln's Birthday as a state worker holiday, allowed the state to offer incentives not to take health insurance and required municipal employees work 20 hours per week to get health benefits.

As part of his attempt to balance the budget, Corzine decreased funding to most programs and localities including state universities and colleges. The first of these decreases came with the 2007 budget. Rutgers University and other New Jersey state universities raised tuition, cut hundreds of sections of classes, and several sports teams. With the latest decrease in funding for 2009, most state institutions have less funding than they had a decade ago. Despite the $15 million in cuts, Rutgers went ahead with previous agreed upon raises of $15 million to their executive faculty. This resulted in Rutgers making $30 million in cuts.

Corzine has been active with a number of philanthropic and civic organizations. He currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Covenant House and is on the board of the New Jersey Reentry Corporation. His civic work has involved serving on the boards of several organizations in the New York-New Jersey area, including the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the New York Philharmonic, the New York Child Study Center and the NYC Partnership. In addition, Corzine has served as co-chair of the National Commission on Capital Budgeting under President Clinton, chairman of the Treasury's Government Borrowing Committee and Chairman of the Public Securities Association.

He served on the board of trustees of the University of Chicago and served as an ex-officio member of the board of trustees of Princeton University. Corzine was the J.L. Weinberg Visiting Professor of Public Policy at Princeton in 2010 and 2011. He currently is serving at Fairleigh Dickinson University as chairman of an advisory board that is working to establish a graduate school of public and global affairs. Corzine is also serving as a visiting lecturer on politics and public policy at Farleigh's Wroxton campus in the United Kingdom.

Corzine was appointed CEO and Chairman of MF Global, a multinational futures broker and bond dealer, in March 2010.

MF Global's stock price declined two-thirds in the final week of October 2011 and its credit rating was reduced making its debt high-yield debt following huge quarterly losses. On October 31, 2011, trading was halted on shares of MF Global prior to the market opening, and soon thereafter MF Global announced that it had declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Shortly afterwards, federal regulators began an investigation into hundreds of millions of dollars in missing customer funds. Corzine resigned as CEO on November 4, 2011, after having retained the services of defense attorney Andrew J. Levander. It was reported that Corzine declined a severance package worth $12.1 million. MF Global's collapse was one of the ten biggest bankruptcies in U.S. history.

Corzine was subpoenaed to appear before a House committee on December 8, 2011, to answer questions regarding 1.2 billion dollars of missing money from MF Global client accounts. He testified before the committee, "I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date," and that given the number of money transfers in the final days of trading at MF Global, he didn't know specifics of the movement of the funds. He also denied authorizing any misuse of customer funds. In March 2012, Bloomberg reported on a memo produced by congressional investigators that quoted an internal company e-mail relating to a $175 million transfer that was a subject of their investigation. Initial media reports suggested impropriety on Corzine's part, but this was later disproved. According to The New York Times, the employee responsible for the transfer emailed Corzine stating the transfer was a "House Wire", meaning it came from the firm's own account. The instructions Corzine had given were to deal with several overdrafts at JPMorgan Chase, but never related to any specific accounts or specific transfers made. A spokesperson for Corzine responded that Corzine "never directed Ms. O'Brien or anyone else regarding which account should be used to cure the overdrafts, and he never directed that customer funds should be used for that purpose. Nor was he informed that customer funds had been used for that purpose". In fact, as The New York Times reported, Corzine had been given specific assurances that the transfer in question was proper, and that no customer funds had been used. Subsequent court filings also attest to this fact. On November 5, 2013, The New York Times reported that MF Global customers would likely recover 100 percent of their funds. A spokesman for Corzine said "Mr. Corzine is very pleased that all customers will receive a full recovery. This is a great outcome, which has been anticipated for many months." Customers have since received distributions making them whole.

In June 2013, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed civil charges against Corzine for using funds from MF's customer accounts for corporate purposes. "Corzine is charged with one count of failure to segregate and misuse of customer funds and one count of failure to supervise diligently," a news report said. The commission drew on extensive taped Corzine phone conversations in filing the complaint. Corzine's attorney Levander issued a statement contesting the charges when they were filed.

In 2013, Corzine, and managers including Bradley Abelow and Henri Steenkamp, appealed a court ruling relating to repayments to customers of the bankrupt brokerage. A spokesman for Corzine made clear that the appeal was not an attempt to delay payments to customers, but due to a disagreement regarding how those claims would be handled by the trustee after they were paid. Corzine fully supported customers receiving 100 percent of their money and had no desire for this to be delayed. There was nothing preventing the trustee from making full distributions immediately and litigating the appeal after the fact. Ultimately all customers were paid in full.