West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Lehman Brothers, Wall Street’s fourth biggest investment bank has filed for bankruptcy, making it the largest and highest-profile casualty of the global credit crisis, with approximately $639 billion in assets.

The bank said the Chapter 11 filing will not include its broker-dealer operations and other units, including Neuberger Berman. Lehman is looking at selling its broker-dealer operations, and is still in advanced discussions with a number of potential buyers of its investment management division.

Investors in recent weeks had grown increasingly jittery about Lehman’s $46 billion of mortgages and asset-backed securities, as well as its credit rating and its ability to raise capital. 

Bankruptcy also represents a bad end to Chief Executive Dick Fuld’s four-decade career at Lehman. Fuld, who piloted the investment bank through prior crises with aplomb, was widely seen as too slow to recognize Lehman’s need to raise capital and shed bad assets.

Lehman listed its biggest unsecured creditors as Citigroup Inc, Bank of New York Mellon Corp, Aozora Bank, and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. Citi and Bank of New York Mellon are trustees for Lehman bonds.

The firm said that as of May 31, it owed about $110.5 billion on account of senior unsecured notes, about $12.6 billion on account of subordinated unsecured notes and about $5 billion on account of junior subordinated notes.

Alex Akesson

Editor for HedgeCo.Net
Email: alex@hedgeco.net

HedgeCo.Net is a premier hedge fund database and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership on www.hedgeco.net is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds!

Tags: asset-managers, boston, charter-one-financial-inc, de-janeiro-brazil, eton-park, financial-services-giant, global-funds, investor-group, lehman-brothers-holdings, onshore, parents, peloton-partners, tousa-inc

Reuters – Blackstone and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co are each looking to buy parts of Lehman’s real estate and asset management units, sources familiar with the situation said on Friday, sparking a broad rebound in financial stocks.

The real estate unit of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, which includes property and some asset-backed securities, could be worth about $5 billion (2.8 billion pounds), the sources said.

Lehman shares jumped 5.3 percent after the Reuters report. That helped lift the S&P financial index , which had slipped earlier on Friday, by 1.8 percent.

"Lehman has been so shredded in terms of confidence that anything like this is something that can ignite a upward movement at any point," said Michael Holland, founder of money manager Holland & Co LLC.

Read Complete Article

Tags: ameriprise, bad-news, best-performance, commodities-management, halo, indefinite-period, lehman-brothers-holdings, lehman-brothers-holdings-inc, mccabe, peloton-partners, sailfish-capital-partners-llc, senior-executives, tax-authorities, wire-fraud

WA Today- Australia’s biggest life insurer and funds manager, AMP, was ducking for cover today. What are AMP’s holdings of CDOs, CLOs ABSs and CDSs?

Not much of an answer to that one. "We are holding a number of these instruments … but it is immaterial”.

Right, just like NAB’s holdings were immaterial until last Friday when it wrote down $830 million worth of CDOs (collateralised debt obligations).

The National Australia Bank is not alone when it comes to being played for a sucker by Wall Street hucksters flogging fancy derivative product.

We are talking fund managers, hedge funds, financial planners even a slather of local councils across the country. Many bought CDOs, CLOs (collateralised loan obligations), ABSs (asset backed securities) and other noxious structured finance products whose value is now in question.

Read Complete Article

Tags: combination-of-the-two, equity-fund, finance-services, northwestern-mutual-life, peloton-partners

Tags: advisory-group, bad-credit, investment-arm, medallion, peloton-partners, researcher, taking-aim