PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s “botched” auditing helped cause the collapse of commodities brokerage MF Global Holdings Ltd., and the accounting firm should pay billions of dollars in damages as a result, a lawyer said Tuesday at the start of a trial in federal court in New York.

“PwC failed to do its job, with disastrous consequences,” said Daniel Fetterman, an attorney for MF Global’s bankruptcy administrator, in his opening statement in the brokerage’s $3 billion malpractice lawsuit against PwC.

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