Lehmans job moving slower than expected
Tony Lomas, the lead administrator says winding down Lehman Brothers European operations has been held up because of the huge number of trades the bank was involved in
The administration of Lehman Bros has been slowed up because the exact
financial position of the collapsed bank is still unknown.
Tony Lomas, one of the four joint administrators from PricewaterhouseCoopers
made the frank admission, citing the huge number of trades that Lehman Brothers
entered into with hundreds of counterparties for the delay.
These counterparties are still trying to figure out their exact positions,
which has held up the administrators from being able to put an accurate value on
Lehman Brothers assets. This is needed in order to work out the levels of
returns creditors can expect.
‘I’d like to be further on with the numbers by now,’ Lomas told the
Financial
Times. There are 97 different custodians around the world who are holding
securities that either belong to us our clients and the returns from them are
not yet complete. That means that we don’t know what is out there in terms of
assets.
‘After six weeks you would expect that we’d have that information, but we
haven’t. But it’s not for the want of trying.’
Further reading:
Lehmans
creditors’ meeting set for 14 November