"Lehman advisers paid $641.9m in 16 months" by Bloomberg News | February 22, 2010
NEW YORK - Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the investment bank liquidating in bankruptcy, paid its lawyers and other advisers $641.9 million in 16 months since September 2008, according to documents filed with regulators.
Restructuring firm Alvarez & Marsal LLC, which provided Lehman with its current chief executive, Bryan Marsal, led the payments, with $233 million in fees for “interim management’’ through January. Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP collected $149.5 million for acting as the investment bank’s lead bankruptcy law firm. Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy LLP received $42.4 million for advising Lehman’s creditors’ committee. Lehman and its affiliates reported cash holdings of $17.6 billion on Jan. 31, an increase from $17.2 billion a month earlier.
Lehman is liquidating to pay creditors. Its payments to advisers have not faced major challenges such as those in the case of bankrupt automaker Chrysler LLC, which is using US Treasury loans to wind itself down. Lehman filed the biggest US bankruptcy case in September 2008.
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Let the blame game begin:
"Lehman report blasts executives; JPMorgan, Citi cited in collapse" by Linda Sandler and Don Jeffrey, Bloomberg News | March 12, 2010
NEW YORK — JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. helped cause the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. by demanding more collateral and changing guarantee agreements, the bankrupt bank’s examiner said yesterday in a report....
Former Lehman chief executive Richard Fuld, former chief financial officer Erin Callan, former executive vice president Ian Lowitt, and former managing director Christopher O’Meara certified misleading statements, the report said. Lehman collapsed in September 2008 with $639 billion in assets, the biggest bankruptcy in US history.
Also see: The Lying Looters of Lehmans
And they were grabbing as much loot as they could on the way out, huh?
Commenting on Barclays PLC’s purchase of Lehman’s North American brokerage, Anton Valukas, the US Trustee-appointed examiner, said a “limited amount of assets’’ belonging to Lehman were “improperly transferred to Barclays.’’
Kerrie Cohen, a Barclays spokeswoman, declined to comment. Citigroup spokeswoman Danielle Romero-Apsilos and JPMorgan spokesman Brian Marchiony didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment.
But reporters and newspapers are better than bloggers because they can hold officials accountable and their clout demands a response.
It is obvious now that the papers are nothing more than a conduit for the powerful to push (or conceal) their agenda.
Barclays is Britain’s second-biggest bank. Citigroup is the third-biggest US bank, and JPMorgan is second. Fuld was warned months before the bankruptcy by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that Lehman might fail....
Yeah, Hank was a real hero.
Also see: Paulson Perjures Himself
Then why hasn't he been charged?
Lehman’s executives engaged in conduct ranging from “non-culpable errors of business judgment’’ to “actionable balance sheet manipulation,’’ as they used “accounting gimmicks’’ to move assets off the balance sheet without disclosing that to the government, rating agencies, investors, or Lehman’s board. Valukas spent a year and $38 million producing the report on whether banks triggered Lehman’s bankruptcy, whether Barclays improperly benefited from it, and what role was played by the Federal Reserve System. Valukas interviewed more than 100 people, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, and former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox, and scrutinized more than 10 million documents, plus 20 million pages of e-mails from Lehman, according to court filings.
Looks like he did a PRETTY THOROUGH JOB!
“The Examiner has determined that there are a limited number of colorable claims for avoidance actions against JPMorgan and Citibank,’’ Valukas said in the report. Valukas defined a colorable claim in the report as sufficient credible evidence to persuade a jury to award damages at trial.
So when are the charges?
NEW YORK — A Lehman Brothers whistle-blower warned his bosses that accounting gimmicks the bank used before its collapse may have been illegal, his lawyer said yesterday.
Matthew Lee, a former Lehman senior vice president, was fired days after questioning the accounting tricks in a letter to his superiors, attorney Erwin Shustak said. Shustak gave a copy of the letter to the Associated Press. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. imploded in September 2008, becoming the biggest corporate bankruptcy in US history.
The collapse sent financial markets across the globe into a free fall and prompted a massive bailout of the US banking system. An examiner appointed by the bankruptcy court said in a 2,200-page report last week that Lehman hid its debt and perilous financial condition by using an accounting gimmick called Repo 105.
In a letter dated May 18, 2008, Lee wrote that he discovered the bank had been underreporting its debt by about $5 billion at the end of each month. Lee, a 14-year Lehman veteran, wrote that he felt compelled to report the “discrepancies’’ under the firm’s code of ethics, saying he believed they “possibly constitute unethical or unlawful conduct.’’
Days after sending the letter, the firm told Lee he was being terminated as part of a general layoff, Shustak said....
Senate Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd yesterday called for Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the circumstances that led to Lehman’s collapse.
Why wasn't he already?
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It was like a hidden passage on Wall Street, a secret channel that enabled billions of dollars to flow through Lehman Brothers.
In the years before its collapse, Lehman used a small company — its “alter ego,’’ in the words of a former Lehman trader — to shift investments off its books and mask some of its risks.
The firm, called Hudson Castle, played a crucial, behind-the-scenes role at Lehman, according to an internal Lehman document and interviews with former employees. The relationship raises new questions about the extent to which Lehman obscured its financial condition before it plunged into bankruptcy.
So they SET UP a DUMMY CORPORATION as a FALSE FRONT for FRAUD, 'eh?
Who do they think they were, the CIA?
Or were they CIA?
They HAVE infiltrated darn near every institution in AmeriKa.
Entities like Hudson Castle are part of a vast financial system that operates in the shadows of Wall Street, largely beyond the reach of banking regulators.
As if they were extending their arms.
These entities enable banks to exchange investments for cash to finance their operations and, at times, make their finances look stronger than they are.
That is the VERY DEFINITION of FRAUD, folks!
What a GREAT ECONOMIC SYSTEM WE HAVE, huh?
Don't you want one as soon as possible, occupied people?
Critics say that such deals helped Lehman and other banks mask their exposure to the risky investments tied to subprime mortgages and commercial real estate.
That's the SOP down there, isn't it?
Cut up crap, call it gold, and sell it to suckers.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining various creative borrowing tactics used by some 20 financial companies. A congressional panel investigating the financial crisis also plans to examine such deals at a hearing in May that will focus on Lehman and Bear Stearns, according to two people familiar with the panel’s plans. Most of these deals are legal.
So nothing can be done, and no charges filed.
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