Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Lehman Brothers creditors lose $75 billion

There was I thinking that investment bankers were geniuses:

"Dick Fuld, the ousted chairman and chief executive of Lehman Brothers, and his deputies cost creditors as much as $75 billion (£51.5 billion) by rushing the stricken investment bank into a bankruptcy filing, an analysis by liquidators has found.

Bryan Marsal, co-chief executive of Alvarez & Marsal (A&M), which is restructuring Lehman, described the bank's unexpected collapse on September 15 as “unconscionable waste of value”. Mr Marsal's report estimates that between $50 billion and $75 billion of assets that could have been used to repay unsecured creditors were wasted because Lehman did not have a clear plan to wind down the bank."

2 comments:

  1. this report is just rubbish. Bank counterparties refuse to agree with bankrupt companies. Banks do not have orderly 'administrations'. they simply collpase as they are second by second market traders.

    Whoever paid for that report is an even bigger idiot than the person who wrote it. no doub desperate to get some ammo for their expensive army of lawyers.

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  2. Naked Capitalism hammered that report recently, calling it an attempt on the part of the Lehman directors to avoid criminal liability. Have a read.

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