The 11 Largest Bankruptcies In 

American History

In the wake of the MF Global's bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal blog Deal Journal put together a great list of the 10 biggest Chapter 11 filings in U.S. history.

Now, MF Global makes the cut at #8, with it's $41.05 billion in assets according to court filings. It's America's first casualty of the Euro crisis.

The firms' collapses came about by a scary variety of causes: criminal CEOs, overambitious expansion, or simply disastrous circumstances, to name a few.

The range of industries represented, however, is narrow. Finance, automaking, and energy nearly cover it.

The bankruptcies are ranked by the value of each company’s assets before its bankruptcy filing.


Pacific Gas & Electric Co

Filed Chapter 11: 2001

Value at bankruptcy: $36.15 billion

What happened: PG&E, California's largest utility company, fell victim to the state's electricity crisis of 2000-2001. Blackouts swept the state and costs soared, blamed in large part on California's deregulation of the energy industry in 1996—the first state to do so.

Enron—who also made this list—even cut off power to manipulate prices, worsening the crisis. PG&E left bankruptcy in April 2004.

MF Global's Chapter 11 filing officially knocks PG&E off the top ten.

Thornburg Mortgage

Filed Chapter 11: May 2009

Value at bankruptcy: $36.5 billion

What happened: The housing crash and credit crunch doomed the mortgage lender. Thornburg's fall demonstrated that the crisis went far beyond subprime lenders; Thornburg "specialized in making mortgages larger than $417,000 to borrowers with good credit."

The company was liquidated.

Chrysler

Filed Chapter 11: April, 2009

Value at bankruptcy: $39.3 billion

What happened: As the financial crisis spread to the wider economy and threatened automakers, President Obama intervened and ordered Chrysler into bankruptcy. The United Automobile Workers were given control of the company, with the federal government and Italian carmaker Fiat as minority stakeholders.

Two years out of bankruptcy, Chrysler was profitable again.


MF Global

Filed Chapter 11: Oct 31 2011

Value at bankruptcy: $41 billion (as of Sept. 30)

What happened: The Jon Corzine-led brokerage just became the largest American victim of the European debt crisis to date.


Conseco

Filed Chapter 11: 2002

Value at bankruptcy: $61.4 billion

What happened: The insurer and financial firm overaggressively acquired companies in the 90s. Its purchase of Green Tree Financial, a financier of mobile-home sales, was particularly damaging in the long run.

Conseco emerged from bankruptcy in 2003.


Enron

Filed Chapter 11: 2001

Value at bankruptcy: $65.5 billion

What happened: Energy giant Enron was destroyed by a giant scandal that turned it into the ultimate posterchild for outrageously fraudulent accounting practices.

CIT Group

Filed Chapter 11: November 2009

Value at bankruptcy: $80.4 billion

What happened: The commercial lender was caught in the credit crunch after an "ill-fated expansion"—only to be bailed out by TARP 38 days later.

General Motors

Filed Chapter 11: June 2009

Value at bankruptcy: $91 billion

What happened: The pillar of American manufacturing, already hurt by years of weakening sales, was dealt a death blow by the financial crash. Only a government bailout saved the firm from annihilation.

WorldCom

Filed Chapter 11: July 2002

Value at bankruptcy: $103.9 billion

What happened: The telecommunications heavyweight joined Tyco and Enron in early-2000s accounting and executive malpractice scandals. CEO Bernie Ebbers went to jail for what was then the "largest corporate fraud in U.S. history."

WorldCom left bankruptcy renamed MCI in 2004 and was purchased by Verizon in 2005.


Washington Mutual

Filed Chapter 11: September 2008

Value at bankruptcy: $327.9 billion

What happened: Lehman Brothers, the first big domino to fall in 2008, knocked WaMu over. Regulators seized the savings-and-loan holding company after "customers withdrew $16.7 billion over 10 days."

JPMorgan then bought WaMu, making a Too Big To Fail bank even bigger.


Lehman Brothers

Filed Chapter 11: September 2008

Value at bankruptcy: $691 billion

What happened: As the financial meltdown accelerated, the government made the now-controversial decision not to bail out the giant investment bank. Lehman was eventually liquidated.