Lehman Brothers

Manhattan federal district court judge Lewis A. Kaplan has issued a decision permitting fraud claims stemming from the Lehman Brothers meltdown to proceed. The judge recognized that the September 2008 collapse of Lehman, which disrupted the entire economy and greatly affected owners of the company’s securities, might have occurred in any event because of the assets it held.

The FDIC has released a report examining how it could have structured an orderly resolution of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. under the orderly liquidation authority of Title II of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act had that law been in effect in advance of Lehman's failure. 

Accounting giant Ernst & Young LLP (“E&Y”) has been charged with helping Lehman Brothers Holding, Inc., engage in an accounting fraud involving the surreptitious removal of tens of billions of dollars of fixed income securities from Lehman’s balance sheet in order to deceive the public about Lehman’s true liquidity condition.  

The report issued yesterday by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy examiner, Anton R. Valukas, brings to many people a concept that is not often in the public view: the bankruptcy examiner. Under Bankruptcy Code Section 1106(a)(3), an examiner who is appointed in a chapter 11 bankruptcy case

A lot is being written, including here, about the report released yesterday by the examiner for Lehman Brothers, but we’ve found five articles online that we believe do an excellent job in summarizing the key findings and conclusions of the report. They are: 

On January 29, 2008, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (“LBHI”) reported record revenues of nearly $60 billion and record earnings in excess of $4 billion for its fiscal year ending November 30, 2007.

In anticipation of a hearing scheduled for 2:00 tomorrow afternoon, Lehman Brothers, and its law firm, Weil Gotshal & Manges, have urged the bankruptcy court to make public the investigative report into the events that precipitated Lehman’s downfall that has been prepared by the court-appointed Examiner, Anton R. Valukas. 

Good morning! It has been almost exactly one year since the Lehman Brothers collapse. Although significant new laws and regulations are expected, we haven’t yet seen much from Congress. The Securities and Exchange Commission continues to highlight steps it has taken since the Madoff scheme became public. But what, really, has changed?

We are days away from the one year anniversary of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers – the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.

Over the long holiday weekend, we mentioned the anniversary of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout (see http://www.financialfraudlaw.com/content/one-year-ago-fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-bailouts). As we noted, that was just the start of the Big Mess.