PwC: Lehman staff will be paid

4,500 Lehman Brothers’ staff who have continued working since the bank went
into administration will get paid this month, PwC has said.

Administrators from the firm said on a webcast this afternoon that those who
have kept on working will be paid their salary for the last month by September
30.

It had been uncertain as to whether staff would receive their pay.

Speaking on the webcast, PwC partner Tony Lomas said: ‘One very important
point – when we arrived there were no funds here. Staff were concerned that they
weren’t going to be paid their September salaries.

‘And we were concerned we wouldn’t be able to make various other payments
necessary to continue.

‘We have succesfully concluded negotiations on raising funds.. we’ve arranged
a loan which has enabled us to give an undertaking to staff that before the end
of the month we will pay all 4,500 staff…as long as [they] turn up to work to
help in our efforts to take this forward.’

Lomas added: ‘We’re here to take the opportunity to communicate progress made
at Lehmans in the UK because there’s a lot of uncertainty out there.

‘A lot of counter parties are interacting with bank wanting to know what’s
going on.

‘A lot of work has been done since Monday morning in effort to take control
of the company’s affairs … and begin the wind down.

‘We’re not responsible in our administration capacity for all of the
companies. There are some still solvent and still trading.

‘It’s important also that the trading entities out there who are doing
business with Lehman and who want to resolve those situations understand how we
operate as an administrator and what is important to us is that they can take
this into account when they develop their strategies when dealing with their
exposures.

‘The key for us is the control and protection and assets that belong to the
company.

‘We have to turn those assets into cash, making sure that those assets don’t
transfer in some uncontrolled way to a third party.

‘And further more with regard to the liabilities that Lehmans has to various
institutions out there, we need to make absolutely certain that no preference is
created, that no institution out there receives payment, who shouldn’t receive
it in priority to anybody else.

‘Those principles are overriding all of our actions here. We’ve communicated
those to the traders in order to develop a way of working going forwards with
them.’

Lomas revealed later on the webcast that the Bank of England had helped the
administrators.

He said: ‘In particular the Bank of England has been very helpful in
establishing the banking facilities for us because the company didn’t have any
bank accounts of its own that were in operation anyway, relying on the parent
company in operation in the US, for cash transactions so that’s enabled us to
deposit the money that we borrowed and now begin to make payments including the
salary payments.

The administrators have set up a hotline, the number for which will be
announced shortly, and a website to deal with the many enquiries they are
getting.

‘We’ve had that many that the systems have become jammed so we’re not
confident that we can turn this around as quickly as our counter-parties would
like so this is a step to try and resolve that,’ Lomas said.

The email address to us for those who want to contact the administrators is:
[email protected]