Lehman’s fate still hangs in the balance of the marketplace, rising faster as the rest of the financial stocks rise and falling faster when they dip. This morning Bloomberg has a long article on the history of Lehman’s past brushes with death and, more interestingly, the history of its top man, Dick Fuld.
It’s worth reading in its entirety but one thing that’s not explored is the irony of the possibility that the Blackstone Group might be a buyer of Lehman. Blackstone was rumored to have mulled a bid for Bear Stearns, and many think that the buyout firm would be interested in Lehman if the brokerage stumbled. The irony is that Blackstone was founded by two former Lehmanites: Pete Peterson and Steve Schwarzman. Peterson left Lehman, which he ran for years after rising through its banking department, after years of struggling with its top trader, Lewis Glucksman. Fuld was a protege of Glucksman. A purchase by Blackstone would reverse the outcome of that decades old power struggle between bankers and traders.
Lehman Fault-Finding Points to Last Man Fuld as Shares Languish [Bloomberg]
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If Blackstone bought a bank, why would anyone else want to lend them money? Wouldn’t they be supporting a competitor? BX’s business model is predicated on sourcing financing. Wouldn’t buying LEH complicate this???
Hey Carney, what’s up with the “it’s?” Let’s spruce up our grammar please.
yeah fag. pay some attention to grammar.
@1
You know banks finance other banks, right?
What’s with all the anal grammar nerds in this site?
Is this post okay?
@5
No need to be ashamed of the fact that your alma mater was not accredited
#6 loser. You went to a good school? Awesome!
@9:30 (something wrong about typing #1) – firstly, blackstone has been trying to cut the banks out for some time. they have their own advisory group (which means fewer fees to goldman and morgan). they are (not so) quietly building up capital market capabilities (which means they can IPO their portfolio companies. the only thing left for banks is to provide fairness opinions to make sure steve doesn’t get accused of self dealing…
Do I really need to explain my campaign to correct English usage again? I do not agree with the rulebooks and general habits of usage which instruct us not to use the apostrophe to indicate the possessive for ‘it.’
It is not confusing in context. At least, it is not any more confusing than the apostrophe is in the sentence “John’s new rules for indicating the possessive are awesome.” For a brief moment you may suspect that the sentence is going to tell you what John is, but you quickly realize that the apostrophe is indicating possession.
Nonetheless, in a rare bow to the wisdom of the commenter crowd, I will change it for this post.
JC – Going by your logic, shouldn’t KKR have bought BSC? I mean Kravis is a former Bear man…
@ 10
Obviously taken ad infinitum every bank would be taken out eventually
Carney – Any chance you or the guys over at ATL want to take a look into the legal/regulatory hurdles for a BX/LEH deal (or a similar one)? Pretty sure there are some significant challenges to such a deal…would be interesting to see how a PE would structure it.
lehman needs to merge with wachovia in order to survive
WacLehvia.
@#10
It almost happened. Earlier Kravis was looking to take a huge equity stake until Schwartz killed the idea. He didn’t want to scare away business that would be upset with Kravis on board.
The weekend of the fire sale at Bear there was a team of KKR people going through the cooked books.
JC, i could care less about grammar, but that last explanatory post made no sense to me. or am i just stupid(er than i thought)?
oh i see! no, i would not think you were trying to say ‘john is’. that’s why people generally read the entire sentence.