MF Global Inc. was the third most actively traded bankruptcy case in February, after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ) and its former brokerage, Lehman Brothers Inc., according to a report.

Investors traded almost $11 million of the defunct MF Global commodity brokerage as they bet on the value of its claims, SecondMarket Holdings Inc. said in a report released today. The trustee liquidating the brokerage said this month he would return another $685 million to commodity customers, giving some of them 80 percent of their assets -- previously frozen when the firm failed --- including earlier distributions of $3.9 billion.

According to court filings this month, Fulcrum Credit Partners LLC bought more than $130 million of claims on the MF Global brokerage. The largest claims were bought from ITB Premium Funds.

The Lehman parent’s debt accounted for 91 percent of the value of all trading in claims on bankrupt companies in February, totaling $3.2 billion, the report said. The total was swollen by a large transfer that wound up with Elliott Associates LP. Trades in the Lehman brokerage totaled $37.8 million.

All amounts refer to the face value of the claims, not the trading prices, which reflect payment prospects and aren’t disclosed.

Once the world’s fourth-biggest investment bank, New York- based Lehman filed the biggest U.S. bankruptcy in history in 2008 listing debt of $613 billion. MF Global Holdings Ltd., the brokerage’s parent company, filed the eighth-largest U.S. bankruptcy on Oct. 31 with debt of almost $40 billion.

To contact the reporter on this story: Linda Sandler in New York at lsandler@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Pickering at jpickering@bloomberg.net