Lehman, two years on: Mission unaccomplished
Lehman’s administrators face several more years of hard work
AS THE second anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy approaches, economists continue to debate whether the bank could or should have been saved. Its creditors and former clients are focused on the more practical question of what can be salvaged from the wreckage.
With over $600 billion of assets, Lehman was America’s largest and most complex corporate failure. Since then, Alvarez & Marsal (A&M), a restructuring firm, has been winding down Lehman’s holding company, untangling derivatives contracts and assessing more than 65,000 claims from clients, counterparties and other creditors. It has 200 people working on the derivatives book alone. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) is leading a similar effort at Lehman’s main European arm. ...
