Lehman Suing Barclays Over 2008 Sale Of Broker-Dealer Unit

Developing story: It was just a matter of time, as previously expected. Ironically, on September 18th 2008 Lehman would undergo millennia of Chinese water torture just to get the sale done. How everything changes in one short year.

Comments

[agrotera]

Hank and Ben forced this bad deal on the stakeholders of LEH, and overpriced MER for the stakeholders of BAC to pay--won't someone please make these two accountable! 

[John Self]

So conflicted on this.  On one hand, you want the bankruptcy estate to realize the full extent of the value to which it's entitled.  And if the execs cut a shady deal, call them on the carpet.  So from that angle, I'm rooting for Lehman.

But... but ... isn't this a consequence of the short time-frame of the Lehman sale?  Why is Harvey Miller still out there trumpeting the Lehman sale as a victory for distressed companies everywhere?  (See comments at Georgetown Law School earlier today.)   Why isn't anyone out there saying, "Wait -- wasn't the hyper-expedited treatment of the Lehman sale a prerequisite to the Constitutional abuses of Chrysler and GM?"  If one takes a step back and views things from the perspective of the Framers, isn't this type of sale -- among the most complicated ever, on three days' notice, with almost no due diligence available -- a violation of the stakeholders' unalienable rights?  (We can deny that again and again, but sooner or later, it becomes OUR rights that are getting curtailed.)

Maybe more time would have allowed the bankruptcy estate to discover the purported fraud by the Barclays-nee-Lehmans executives.  That's the angle I'll sell to myself, against all plausibility....

[Anonymous]

the kristalnicht of theft in the night through
illegal panic actions in midnight court sessions
is precisely about what i wrote
my congressshit several times last year and this....

it is a brazen putsch....and this is why i implore
americans to take to the streets...these evil
nazi thugs have staged the reichstag fire and
the stupid ignorant americans just stand there
and watch....

[Brick]

Lets see Lehman collapsed owing 600 billion world wide. One of the creditors to Lehman was Barclays who also have assets frozen in lehman europe. Price waterhouse cooper the european liquidators are currently suing lehman us for something like 200 billion.
If barclays do have to pay 10 billion and barclays cannot get their money back as creditors and the 200 billion claim from europe is rejected then US creditors might see some value. The problem is this means european banks get nothing back while US banks will.
My guess is that rather than risk political confrontations with Europe a deal for a couple of billion will be done. The alternative might be that european banks start taking large equity stakes in US banks to reclaim their money.