MF Global Holdings Ltd. is going after $20 million in dividends it paid to private equity firm J.C. Flowers & Co. and other shareholders in the year leading up to its bankruptcy, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported yesterday. In a lawsuit filed in court on Wednesday, MF Global said that it paid $16.1 million in dividends to J.C. Flowers and $3.9 million to another group of preferred stockholders from November 2010 all the way up to August 2011, less than three months before the firm collapsed into bankruptcy. MF Global says that money belongs to its estate, thanks to a provision of the Bankruptcy Code that allows a company to claw back money it paid out in the year before its bankruptcy filing if its financial condition was perilous.
