Its collapse is considered the climax of the 2008 financial crisis. The liquidation of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers took almost a decade and a half. In the end, $115 billion was paid out to creditors.
Around 14 years after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, the former US investment bank has finally been wound up. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman declared the bankruptcy case closed. As a final act, she granted Lehman trustee James Giddens and his law firm Hubbard
The lesson from Lehman Brothers’ demise is that “you should avoid the collapse of a large financial institution, but history teaches us that it is inevitable,” Giddens said.
More than $115 billion was paid out to Lehman Brothers creditors in the New York bankruptcy proceedings. The 111,000 customers and secured creditors were fully compensated for a total of $106 billion. Unsecured creditors received at least 41 percent of their claims reimbursed. Initially, about half was expected.
In Europe, too, the insolvency proceedings against the local Lehman subsidiaries ended lightly. At the German Lehman Brothers Bankhaus AG, insolvency administrator Michael Frege was even able to meet more than 100 percent of the billions in creditor claims. The main beneficiaries of this were the Bundesbank and the private banks’ deposit protection fund. In Great Britain, too, creditors received their money back in full.
