Bankruptcy Judge Carol Doyle ruled that the trustee in charge of returning funds to customers of scandal-ridden Peregrine Financial Group will receive an initial payment of $1.23 million for his role in unwinding the failed brokerage, Reuters reported yesterday. The Bankruptcy Code allows for the court-appointed trustee, Chicago lawyer Ira Bodenstein, to receive a commission of up to 3 percent of the $123.3 million that has been returned to former brokerage customers. The returned monies represent less than one-third of the funds that customers had deposited with the futures broker when the firm collapsed and the accounts were frozen last July. The initial payment is only part of the $3.7 million in compensation that Bodenstein is seeking for his role in the bankruptcy proceedings, which represents the maximum 3 percent commission allowed under federal law.
