Liquidators of MF Global Singapore have stopped trying to sell the business and are now seeking court approval to return customers' funds, local media reported on Thursday.
Discussions on a potential sale failed around the last two weeks of 2011, the Business Times said.
KPMG, which is administering the winding-down of the company, filed papers in court on Tuesday to seek approval to begin distributing 350 million U.S. dollars of customers' monies out of the 405 million U.S. dollars that it has recovered so far.
"This represents a return of the bulk of the total customers' funds collected thus far and serves to return monies to customers as quickly as possible," liquidator Bob Yap, head of transactions and restructuring at KPMG in Singapore, said in a statement.
The amount recovered so far represents about 86 percent of total customers' assets. The 55 million U.S. dollars that the liquidators are retaining for the moment will act as a reserve as reconciliation and verification of customers' positions continue.
The liquidators are still trying to recover the remaining funds.
MF Global Singapore had about 4,500 customers when it underwent voluntary liquidation in November 2011.
The application is expected to be heard in court by the end of January, with distribution targeted in February.
The Singapore unit of MF Global ran into trouble after its parent brokerage firm imploded into bankruptcy last year in one of the largest bankruptcy. It is still unclear what happened to the 1. 2 billion U.S. dollars that was discovered missing from customer accounts when MF Global failed on Oct. 31.
Initial attempts to sell the Singapore unit sought to package it with MF Global units in Hong Kong and Australia, but those plans fell through because of the difficulties faced by liquidators to close out and recover customers' assets.
The liquidators began to lay off workers at the end of November last year, cutting about 120 jobs by mid-December to leave a barebones staff of about 20./.