Yet some analysts say that when the economy improves, Starbucks is poised to recover customers.
If you look at public, mature SaaS businesses in the U.S., many of them take more than 12 months to recover customer-acquisition costs.
"Not one penny of recovered customer money is used to pay any of the legal fees and expenses incurred by the SIPA trustee," according to the trustee, who was referring to the Securities Investor Protection Act that mandated the SIPC system.
Mr. Freeh and Mr. Giddens, the trustee responsible for recovering customer money, will be joined by regulators, including Robert Cook, director of trading and markets at the Securities and Exchange Commission; Richard Ketchum, head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and Terrence A. Duffy, chairman of the CME Group, MF Global's front-line regulator.
If the talks break down, Mr. Giddens could sue JPMorgan to recover the customer cash.
"As investigators seek to recover MF Global customer funds and hold accountable those responsible for any wrongdoing, this committee will focus our attention on preventing future abuses and the other critical public policy issues raised by the collapse of MF Global," Senator Tim Johnson, Democrat of South Dakota, who is chairman of the committee, said at the hearing.
More than 60percentt of startups surveyed recover their customer-acquisition costs (CAC) in less than six months.
CenterPoint figures the project will cost $550 million or so, which it will recover from customers if regulators approve a charge of $2.50 a month over the next 12 years.
In the aftermath of MF Global's bankruptcy, the trading commission named Ms. Sommers the "senior commissioner with respect to MF Global matters," authorizing her to oversee the enforcement investigation, the bankruptcy case and efforts to recover the missing customer money.
