Sunday, September 14, 2008

Lehman Updates

Bank of America no longer bidding for Lehman

Bank of America is no longer in the bidding for troubled investment bank Lehman Brothers, Bloomberg Television reported on Sunday, citing a person familiar with the negotiations.

"I've just heard from a person familiar with the negotiations that Bank of America is no longer in the bidding for Lehman Brothers," a Bloomberg TV reporter said.


Lehman failure looms as British bank says it won't bid; could Bank of America buy Merrill Lynch?

Barclays PLC dropped out of negotiations to buy Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. today, and Wall Street began to prepare for the liquidation of the crumbling investment bank -- a move that could shake global financial markets.

Lehman's situation appeared increasingly hopeless. Major brokerages began trying to work with each other to close out some of the trades they have with Lehman in so-called derivative securities, a multitrillion-dollar market.

Barclays, Britain’s third-largest bank, had emerged Saturday as the leading contender to acquire Lehman amid marathon negotiations in New York between federal regulators and Wall Street chiefs.

Barclays abandoned its bid after the government refused to financially guarantee any of Lehman’s troubled assets, according to a person familiar with the matter.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, it looks like I was wrong about Lehman getting "Bear Stearned" over the weekend, but something pretty much the same thing happened: it filed for bankruptcy.

To my surprise, though, we got a two-fer, as Merrill got "Bear Stearned" at the same time!

I also read, but have not yet confirmed that GM got a $50B loan!

Sure looks like the crises are becoming bigger and more frequent. Scary times.

Dave