Additional bidders

Madoff Unit Generates Three New Bids for Assets, Trustee Says

Three new potential buyers submitted bids for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC’s market-making business, said the trustee liquidating the assets to recover money for Bernard Madoff’s fraud victims.

"We are pleased that additional bidders have come forward to bid for the market-making business," trustee Irving H. Picard said yesterday in a statement distributed by PR Newswire. "The entry of these new bidders to the process will assure that the sale price for these assets will be maximized for the benefit of Madoff’s victims."

The new bidders will compete with Castor Pollux Securities LLC, a Boston-based broker dealer, at an April 27 auction, Picard said. Castor Pollux might pay as much as $15.5 million for the Madoff unit depending on gross revenue generated and shares traded through 2012, Picard said in a March 28 statement announcing the agreement.

Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty March 12 to defrauding investors by using money from new ones to pay off old ones in a Ponzi scheme. Before his Dec. 11 arrest, Madoff had told his thousands of clients that they had a combined total of about $65 billion, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors and investigators including Picard, a lawyer with Baker & Hostetler LLP in New York, are seeking to recover assets for victims.

The bankruptcy case is Securities Investor Protection Corp. v. Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, 08-01789, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

(Published by Bloomberg - April 23, 2009)