September 10, 2008
One the oldest financial institutions on Wall Street Lehman Brothers, founded more than 157 years ago has announced a series of proposals to help it out of the difficulties it is in because of bad investments in financial derivatives connected to the sub prime housing mortgage market. These bad investments have led to large losses including a 3.9 billion dollar loss in the third quarter.
A little over a year ago Lehman Brothers stock was worth over 80$ a share. Today its stock is selling for just under $7.26 a share. Close to 40 billion dollars in shareholder value has been wiped out and the Bank is perilously close to the edge. However as befits a veteran of the crises, depressions and booms of the past the Bank is making a major effort to survive and eventually prosper. We shall see if it works out in the coming weeks. The chairman of the board Dick Fuld has tried restore confidence in the bank by restructuring it to make it smaller, spin off its troubled commercial real estate division and float it as a new company, Real Estate Investment Global with assets of 25 to 30 billion dollars if they are held to maturity. It also plans to sell a major portion of its profitable investment mangement division and is seeking outside investors to inject capital into the bank, including institutions like the Korean Development Bank.
For the moment it is unclear whether these measures and general refocusing of the bank on its more traditional activities will convince the markets to buy its stock as opposed to panic selling it.Irrational exhuberance alternates with irrational panic and pessimism in the stock market as a general rule . But I hope Lehmans succeed because the failure of another major giant investment bank is not what the American or global economy needs at the moment.
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