- Title: VARIOUS: Lehman's London-based employees say they have lost their jobs
- Date: 16th September 2008
- Summary: (W2) LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (SEPTEMBER 15, 2008) (REUTERS) LEHMAN BROTHERS SIGN INSIDE BUILDING PEOPLE COMING OUT OF UNDERGROUND TRAIN STATION AT CANARY WHARF LEHMAN BROTHERS EMPLOYEE COMING OUT OF TRAIN STATION AND BEING ASKED BY REPORTER HOW HE FEELS ABOUT THE BANK FILING FOR BANKRUPTCY (SOUNDBITE) (English) UNIDENTIFIED LEHMAN BROTHERS WORKER, SAYING: "Obvi
- Embargoed: 1st October 2008 13:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: Finance
- Reuters ID: LVAAH4LMB9X100RI4BQB2FSC9MRT
- Story Text: Lehman employees at the bank's European headquarters in London's Canary Wharf financial district leave their office carrying boxes of possessions and saying they have all lost their jobs. The bank has filed for bankruptcy, becoming the latest victim of the credit crunch.
Workers at Lehman Brothers in London left their Canary Wharf office carrying boxes of their possessions on Monday (September 15), after the news the U.S. bank had filed for bankruptcy.
Lehman said it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and was attempting to sell assets, becoming Wall Street's highest-profile bankruptcy since junk bond specialist Drexel Burnham Lambert succumbed in 1990. Lehman's European arm appointed administrators, who said they would wind down the business in as orderly a manner as possible.
Lehman's petition followed three days of talks between bank CEOs and regulators at the Fed's fortress-like Manhattan building.
In London, it was clear employees had lost their jobs.
"This mean the company ceases to exist," said one man, carrying his box of paperwork and files.
When asked by reporters if others would be leaving the building, he said, "They will be coming out in a few minutes...I think it's going to be all of us."
Kirsty Mccluskey who worked on the trading floor for Lehman's said the atmosphere inside the building was terrible.
"It's like a massive earthquake," she said.
Employee Duo Ai said the understanding was that everyone had lost their job.
"The thing that concerns me most is that the whole financial industry, that seems to be in very bad shape right now, so I..like there'll be tens of thousands of people competing with me on jobs," he added.
Graduate employee Jack Reynolds had only been at the bank for a week.
"And so my...career has been halted at the first hurdle," he said, as he joined the many other employees who descended into the Canary Wharf underground train station carrying their boxes.
Equities Strategist with Barclays Wealth, Hank Potts, said Lehman's bankruptcy does not come as a complete surprise.
"I think the market's been awakened to the risk for some time now.
Although you have to say it is clearly very serious. This is a bank that's been trading for more than 150 years, it's fought off the Great Depression it's fought off Wall Street crashes. To put it in some sort of context, the credit crunch, this has taken out one of the serious players in the United States, the fourth largest investment bank in the United States. So clearly, that's a significant development for the markets and I think it just shows you how serious the fallout from the sub-prime has been, and the ensuing credit crunch," he said.
On a black Sunday (September 14) for Wall Street, frantic attempts to find a rescuer for Lehman failed, and troubled insurer American International Group asked the Fed for a lifeline, according to news reports.
So far this year, the government has sponsored rescues of Bear Stearns and mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, but the authorities did not want to be accused of encouraging excessive risk-taking by bailing out another yet another investment bank.
"Until we had the rescue operation of Bear Stearns being taken over by JP Morgan it was also a Fed orchestrated bail out package but now, from this time with the 'no' from the U.S. authorities, no one is too big to fail any more. And that is quite a surprising fact," said equity analyst at Fortis, Rudy de Groodt.
Lehman collapsed under the weight of toxic assets, mainly related to real estate, that are now worth only a fraction of their original prices.
In its bankruptcy filing, Lehman said Citigroup, Bank of New York Mellon, Japan's Aozora Bank and Mizuho Financial Group were among its top unsecured creditors. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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