High court rejects move for Lehman Bros asset return
The High Court in UK has today rejected a plea by PricewaterhouseCoopers with regards to the speedy return of assets from the fallen Lehman Bros operation. Currently there are around £10 billion of customer assets held outside of the UK which the High Court today ruled fallout of the jurisdiction of UK courts. While they will be returned in due course it seems as though the UK courts have no control over when they will be returned.
Despite the fact that around £8 billion of assets were transferred from the European division to the UK in September last year, there is still significant confusion over the whereabouts of the remaining funds. It was also being revealed that Lehman Bros had spent over $300 million in fees with regards to a potential reorganisation and restructuring of the business prior to its collapse. The final death knell sounded when the US government refused to bail out the operation, something which immediately saw the doors of one of the world's leading investment houses close forever.
There has been controversy regarding the collapse of Lehman Bros and the fact that various parties have expressed an interest in certain operations prior to the collapse, only to pull back and pick up the pieces at greatly reduce prices after the company's demise. There is no doubt that Lehman Bros has been, and will remain for some time, the largest victim of the worldwide economic slowdown and the meltdown in investment markets.
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