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Lehman 9/12
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Dick Fuld sells his Sun Valley ranch for a record price
Sep 19, 2015 | New York Post
By Kevin Dugan
...The former CEO of Lehman Brothers, who led the Wall street bank as it cratered into the largest bankruptcy ever, sold his 71.3-acre ranch on Thursday night at an auction that set a record for home values in the famously tony Idaho ski resort town. -
Here are the crazy stocks Lehman Brothers is still trading
Sep 18, 2015 | Fortune
By Jen Wieczner
...On the seventh anniversary of the financial giant’s historic collapse, someone is still trading stocks at Lehman Brothers. -
Little learnt from Lehman collapse
Sep 21, 2015 | Arabian Business
By Steen Jakobsen
On the seven-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it is worth thinking about what has changed and what hasn't.
Client Attorney Privileged/Attorney Work Product/At Request of Counsel
Dick Fuld
Lehman Brothers Anniversary Coverage
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Dick Fuld sells his Sun Valley ranch for a record price
Sep 19, 2015 | New York Post
By Kevin Dugan
Dick Fuld is leaving Sun Valley — and he’s more than $20 million wealthier as he heads out of town.
The former CEO of Lehman Brothers, who led the Wall street bank as it cratered into the largest bankruptcy ever, sold his 71.3-acre ranch on Thursday night at an auction that set a record for home values in the famously tony Idaho ski resort town.
While the final sale price was not released, it “represents the highest sale price of any property in Sun Valley, Chad Roffers, chairman of Concierge Auctions, which oversaw the sale, told The Post.
Fuld, 69, has been trying to sell his home on Big Wood River Drive in Ketchum for more than a year, mostly through private appointments, The Post first reported in June.
The disgraced banker had been looking for as much as $59.5 million, according to an earlier listing from Concierge Auctions..
...The sale, which will take another 60 days to close, is the highest price fetched for a residential property at auction ever — beating the previously held record of $19.25 million.
For full story: http://nypost.com/2015/09/18/dick-fuld-sells-his-sun-valley-ranch-for-a-record-price/
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Here are the crazy stocks Lehman Brothers is still trading
Sep 18, 2015 | Fortune
By Jen Wieczner
Would the last trader at Lehman please turn out the lights?
On the seventh anniversary of the financial giant’s historic collapse, someone is still trading stocks at Lehman Brothers.
Since Lehman filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008—crashing the market and helping to trigger the financial crisis and Great Recession—it has mostly been selling off what was once a staggering $639 billion in assets and trying to liquidate its massive web of investments. Yet at the offices of Lehman Brothers Holdings, on the 40th floor of the Time & Life building (just 16 floors above Fortune’s offices), someone was still buying stocks as recently as last winter. The remnants of the portfolio are a reminder of just how complex—and financially vast—an entity Lehman was, and the time and effort it has taken to wind down its assets. Seven years later, that unwinding process has no end in sight.
Lehman Brothers Holdings continues to quietly manage a stock-only portfolio—albeit a relatively puny one. According to Lehman’s latest SEC filing, as of June 30 the portfolio had just under $1.2 million in assets, the only individual equity positions that Lehman currently discloses. That portfolio now holds two stocks: Texas-based marketing firm Bazaarvoice BV -3.38% (its top holdingat $934,000) and insulation maker Aspen Aerogels ASPN -4.03% ,
But in March, Lehman owned a good deal more: It reported that the value of the stock portfolio had soared to $38 million in the first quarter of 2015, up from the $1.6 million reported at the end of 2014. Lehman had apparently received a windfall early this year, with which itbought $33 million of Alcoa AA 0.10% shares and $3.6 million worth of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings NCLH -1.19% , exchanging the $2000 worth of UBS UBS -2.93% shares that it held in December.
Still, Lehman’s current two-stock portfolio is a sliver of what it was a year ago, when it had $48.4 million investedin seven stocks: Besides Aspen Aerogels, Bazaarvoice and UBS, it also owned Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A -2.27% , General Electric GE -2.17% , publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt HMHC -0.99% , and Synovus Financial Corp. SNV -2.47% . The surprise? None of those positions appear to be leftovers from a pre-financial crisis fund: Lehman bought all of those stocks in 2013 and 2014, according to Bloomberg data.
Lehman Brothers Holdings would not comment on the trades or its ongoing restructuring efforts. But a source familiar with the liquidation process confirmed that Lehman still manages an equity portfolio “primarily to maximize value to pay back creditors”—as the bank’s ultimate mission (and reason for continued existence) is to repay its debts.
“There’s very little money that can be made by holding the assets that” Lehman has, the person said. The bank takes advantage of “whenever there’s an opportunity to manage and to hold…because the time value of money plays in to all of this and [Lehman] would be monetizing wherever it makes sense to do so.”
Lehman also continues to hold stocks whose value may have sunk and “it doesn’t pay to sell,” the person said, in hopes of milking them for more money when prices recover.
The stock portfolio is just a tiny piece of what’s left of Lehman’s investment colossus. Lehman Brothers Holdings, which managed the bulk of Lehman’s U.S. assets after the bankruptcy, is now down to $15 billion in assets and 200 employees, though other parts of the former Lehman entity are untangling at least several billion more.
It’s unclear, however, why the value of Lehman’s holdings fluctuated and ballooned so dramatically earlier this year. Many of its assets are still tied up in litigation. Court rulings and settlements will often free up assets and cash reserves, which might then be dropped into various Lehman accounts...
For full story: http://fortune.com/2015/09/18/lehman-brothers-collapse-stock-trading/
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Little learnt from Lehman collapse
Sep 21, 2015 | Arabian Business
By Steen Jakobsen
On the seven-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it is worth thinking about what has changed and what hasn't.
Lehman was clearly an opportunity to deal with excess, lax structures and a lack of focus on productivity but instead it became a catalyst for pretend and extend from policymakers. Extending – by at all times buying more time – and pretending – by claiming to be credible in their non-solutions.
They reacted to the growth and sentiment deficit with higher fiscal spending and when that money ran out they forced their central banks to print money – a lot of money.
The response was not a change to the existing world economy order but more of the same – ignoring the dire need for reform, accountability and investment in people and productivity.
Consultants McKinsey & Co put out a report on debt and leverage earlier this year called: Debt and (not much) deleveraging. It shows how since the fall of Lehman, the global debt has risen by a stunning $57 trillion or 17% of GDP.
We didn’t “recover”, we merely “pawned” future growth by borrowing from the future – a result of which is today’s slow grind higher in global GDP, which each year slows relatively and so much that even a Nobel economist seems to think we are in “permanent stagnation”.
It’s important to realise that the seven years that have past since Lehman failed were the "fat years" not the lean years for investors and for non-solutions. Policymakers and politicians continue to sell an illusion that things will improve in the next six months, but the reality remains of there being no reforms, no accountability and no growth, which means no hope and a desperate need for a new beginning.
The result of the above is there for all to see: low employment, weak growth, and the lowest productivity in history, and nation after nation just trying to survive month by month in crisis mode, which make things worse by constantly focusing on the short term.
We have learned nothing from history. Debt replaced productivity and the banks today have tougher regulations but also unprecedented "free money" from the central banks.
Banks, politicians and central banks have created an unholy trinity where each institution is co-dependent on each other to maintain the power. But no one can afford to face reality and stop the merry-go-round of mal-investment and excessive focusing on monetary policy despite neither history nor practice having any evidence that the trifecta can deal with growth, jobs or productivity. If anything, the proof shows the opposite.
Lehman could have been a "real crisis", a real turnaround, a proper paradigm shift. But instead we bought time – the one thing we should not buy but use effectively. The past seven years became time wasted as the economy and society went into a standstill...
For full story: http://www.arabianbusiness.com/little-learnt-from-lehman-collapse-606460.html
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Dick Fuld
Lehman Brothers Anniversary Coverage
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