Former New Jersey governor and U.S. senator Jon Corzine appeared on Capitol Hill Thursday to make his first public defense of his brief stint at the helm of the failed commodities and derivatives brokerage house MF Global. Corzine resigned from the firm last month after it filed for one of the largest bankruptcies in American corporate history, with almost $40 billion in liabilities. It was the largest failure on Wall Street since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Jon Corzine: “Like all of you, I am devastated by the enormous impact on many people’s lives resulting from the events surrounding the MF Global bankruptcy. Of course, my distress and sadness pale in comparison to the losses and hardships that customers, farmers and ranchers and others, employees and investors, have suffered. Their plight weighs on my mind every day. As the chief executive officer of MF Global at the time of its bankruptcy, I truly apologize to all those affected.”