Bankruptcy for Lehman Brothers
(16 September 2008 – USA) Lehman Brothers, one of the world's largest investment banks, has announced it is filing for bankruptcy.
At the same time as fellow investment bank, Merrill Lynch, announced that it would be bought by Bank of America, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy court protection.
The filling of the Chapter 11 petition for Bankruptcy was done in order to protect its assets and maximize value.
The Lehman Brothers collapse will have a significant impact on its 25,000 staff who owned a third of the firm.
Barclays is understood to have told Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, that it was quitting the bailout talks because of two key obstacles. These were the lack of US government financial backing and the need for shareholders in Barclays to approve any deal, which could take weeks.
Paulson went into weekend discussions insisting that government money should not be used to resolve Lehman's problems, and that the administration had to draw a line in the sand.
A spokesman for Barclays said that the proposed transaction required a guarantee for the trading operations of Lehman Brothers that was potentially open-ended, and that Barclays was not willing to provide that guarantee.
The fall of Lehman Brothers leaves just two, in Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, of the five big US investment banks, after the Bear Stearns acquisition earlier in the year and the BOA acquisition of Merrill Lynch.
The filling of the Chapter 11 petition for Bankruptcy was done in order to protect its assets and maximize value.
The Lehman Brothers collapse will have a significant impact on its 25,000 staff who owned a third of the firm.
Barclays is understood to have told Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, that it was quitting the bailout talks because of two key obstacles. These were the lack of US government financial backing and the need for shareholders in Barclays to approve any deal, which could take weeks.
Paulson went into weekend discussions insisting that government money should not be used to resolve Lehman's problems, and that the administration had to draw a line in the sand.
A spokesman for Barclays said that the proposed transaction required a guarantee for the trading operations of Lehman Brothers that was potentially open-ended, and that Barclays was not willing to provide that guarantee.
The fall of Lehman Brothers leaves just two, in Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, of the five big US investment banks, after the Bear Stearns acquisition earlier in the year and the BOA acquisition of Merrill Lynch.
Subscribe