Lehmans administrators: Steven Pearson, PwC

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ appointment of Steven Pearson – as one of four
heavy-weight administrators to collapsed Lehman Brothers – comes as no surprise,
given his experience of working on complex administrations, including Enron
Europe, MG Rover and Atlantic Telecom.

The 43-year-old joined the firm in 1989. The Warwick graduate was later
admitted as partner in 1997.

At
MG
Rover, where PwC was appointed joint administrator of the car dealership’s
operator Phoenix Venture Motors, Pearson openly commented on how investors could
significantly impact on the administration process.

‘Investors can enter the game at the distress level and change the game of
play. I think you’ll see an increasing amount of companies held to ransom and an
increasing amount of companies failing because they are not able to identify the
creditors,’ he said at the time.

With
Enron
Europe Pearson ran into similar issues. In order to secure the sale of one
Enron asset – the right to take gas from the North Sea – Pearson and the rest of
his team had to get consent from over 100 stakeholders.

Pearson said: ‘If you don’t anticipate all the stakeholders the danger is
when you need to get an asset restructured you could fall foul. It’s human
nature to turn around and ask for something if you’re in a really strong
bargaining position.’

But some administrations have been given up on – as was evidenced in PwC’s
failure to agree to terms of potential bidders of
Atlantic
Telecom.

Hopes of selling the business in 2001, after it went into administration,
scuppered and PwC announced that the company had to be broken up.

Read more about the Lehman administrators:

Lehmans
administrators: Dan Schwarzmann, PwC

Lehmans administrators: Mike Jervis, PwC

Lehmans administrators: Tony Lomas, PwC