After happily watching Lehman free fall into bankruptcy and cherry picking the remains, Barclays is now on the hot seat for screwing Lehman a second time by overstating the liabilities it was assuming and later booking a $4 billion gain. Barclays capitalized on the fact that, unlike Lehman, it was not in bankruptcy and still had shareholders to answer to when it estimated the liabilities associated with acquiring Lehman’s investment banking and capital markets units. But a US bankruptcy judge has now ruled that Lehman gets to take a look at Barclays’ math to determine if things like accrued bonuses were ever paid out or simply pocketed.
Lehman Wins Right to Probe Barclays on Alleged Profit [Bloomberg]