Barclays buys prime Lehman assets
TEXT OF STORY
Stacey Vanek-Smith: One British bank is sitting pretty, though. Barclays has agreed to buy up some of Lehman Brothers’ prime assets for about $1.7 billion. That’s a fraction of what bankrupt Lehman was hoping for. Megan Williams has more.
Megan Williams: For the 10,000 or so Lehman employees whose jobs have just been saved, news of the Barclays purchase came as a huge relief.
The bulk of the payment went into to scooping up Lehman’s New York headquarters and two data centers. A mere $250 million in cash went to buying Lehman’s North American investment banking and capital markets businesses. Financial analyst Mamoun Tazi calls the deal a steal for Barclays, and a move that will bring ripple effects throughout Europe.
Mamoun Tazi: It changes the landscape in terms of who owns what and I think it questions the viability of the investment banking model as a stand-alone. We’ll have more investment banks tied up with commercial banks or wholesale banks to basically use the balance sheet of these banks to support the business of the investment banks.
The Barclays offer has to be finalized by next week to be approved by the U.S. bankruptcy court.
I’m Megan Williams for Marketplace.
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