Investment guru Jim Rogers appears to be holding the key to happiness for many a customer of Refco Capital Markets, the unregulated Bermuda-based unit of the collapse broker. The Wall Street Journal reports that more than 50 RCM customers stand to share about $2.3 billion from the unit in a settlement that rests on Rogers’ OK, according to RCM court-appointed trustee Marc Kirschner, who views the proposal as “a potential resolution of the Refco case.” Under the proposed pact, customers with RCM securities accounts could receive more than 70% of their claims’ value, while foreign-exchange account holders would have to be satisfied with pocketing about one-fourth of their value, and a third group would have to settle for the return of their precious metals. Rogers, who claims his Rogers Raw Materials Fund is owed $362 million, reportedly is holding out while his lawyers negotiate, perhaps for a better deal. But time is not on the side of the proposal. If in two weeks, Rogers, the sole holdout and largest single Refco customer, doesn’t sign on, RCM liquidation proceedings would begin, and things will really get ugly if the impasse isn’t broke by mid-October, the Journal says. In other words: no deal, no recovery. Elsewhere in Refcoland, the former commodities broker has proposed entering into an agreement with GAIN Capital Group whereby the Bedminster, N.J.-based foreign-exchange firm would acquire the Refco FXA retail customer account information and related assets, as a way to allow customers to recover potentially all of their account balances.