Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a global financial-services firm that, until declaring bankruptcy in 2008, did business in investment banking, equity and fixed-income sales, research and trading, investment management, private equity, and private banking. It was a primary dealer in the U.S. Treasury securities market.
In 2008, Lehman faced an unprecedented loss to the continuing subprime mortgage crisis, On September 15, 2008, the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The filing marked the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
Lehman shares tumbled over 90% on September 15, 2008. The Dow Jones closed down just over 500 points on September 15, 2008, which was at the time the largest drop in a single day since the days following the attacks on September 11, 2001.
In Hong Kong more than 43,700 individuals in the city have invested in HK$15.7 billion of "guaranteed mini-bonds" (迷你債券) from Lehman.Many claim that banks and brokers mis-sold them as low-risk. Conversely, bankers note that minibonds are indeed low-risk instruments since they were backed by Lehman Brothers, which until just months before its collapse was a venerable member of Wall Street with high credit and investment ratings. The default of Lehman Brothers was a low probability event, which was totally unexpected.
The Hong Kong government proposed a plan to buy back the investments at their current estimated value, which will allow investors to partially recover some of their loss by the end of the year.HK Chief executive Donald Tsang insisted the local banks respond swiftly to the government buy-back proposal as the Monetary Authority received more than 16,000 complaints. On October 17 He Guangbe, chairman of the Hong Kong Association of Banks, agreed to buy back the bonds, which will be priced using an agreed upon methodology based on its estimated current value.
Ref:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehman_Brothers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_of_Lehman_Brothers
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