A Bond Offering with a Twist

MF Global Holdings is taking the cult of the Wall Street chief executive officer to a new level. The futures broker sold $325 million of five-year unsecured notes that come with an unusual feature: They will pay an extra percentage point of interest if Chairman and CEO Jon S. Corzine is named to a federal post and confirmed by the Senate before July 2013, according to a regulatory filing. “That seems crazy,” said William Larkin Jr., a fixed-income portfolio manager who oversees $500 million at Cabot Money Management in Salem, Mass., and has 22 years of experience. “I’ve never heard of something like this.”

Corzine, the 64-year-old former governor of New Jersey, helped run Goldman Sachs from 1994 to 1999 and served in the Senate from 2001 to 2006. Since joining MF Global last year, he’s taken more risk with the firm’s money in a bid to remake the broker into a midsize investment bank. Shares rose 9.5 percent in the 12 months through Aug. 2, while the Standard & Poor’s financial stock index fell 4.9 percent.