Where were you when you heard Lehman Bros went bust?

fc123

I don't remember

I don't remember the actual day but I do remember the immediate drop in turnover in the weeks that followed......which was on top of the drop we'd had since NR in Sept 07.

Fortunately we'd started something else and we started to plan our exit in about November.

I also remember the complete denial by our pension fund corp LL that it would affect commercial property values/rents/prices.

Without the info posted on this board, I think I would have have been more'caught out' as I wouldn't have understood what was going on and much of it would have whooshed over my head.
As it turned out I do credit this board (and it's posters) for supplying useful info and opinion that resulted in us making a very big decsiion at the time...which turned out to the best thing we could have done ........

I have since been in touch with others who were in a similar situation to us who hung on until things 'got back to normal' (or as before) and they never did. One did say to us that we were lucky as we got out at the right time (we didn't, should have exited @ xMAS 2007) ..and how did we 'know'?

When we traded in W1, I chatted to some of the staff who were totally shocked at the drop in sales that Xmas but had no idea why.

Generali

Brother can you spare a dime?

dryhat wrote: »

What a stupid and pointless thread.


Honestly Gen, dredging the remnants your drunken conversations and turning them into a poll is not a good idea and lowers the tone of an otherwise respectable board.

Thank you for your valuable and insightful input.

vivatifosi

I don't remember where I was when Lehmans crashed, but I do remember being at a pensions meeting hosted by our investment bank at the time the credit crunch as a whole started unravelling. That was very odd. Fortuitously, we'd just made a big move into gilts and bonds and weathered the storm considerably better than most as a result. Luck rather than specialist knowledge though.

purch

Brother can you spare a dime?

I can remember when they were Shearson Lehman, in fact I remember when they added EF Hutton to the name, and became Shearson Lehman Hutton, they had Smith Barney involved in there somewhere too during the 1990's as well.

Can't remember what I was doing in 2008, on whatever day it was in September.

Can't remember a thing about yesterday either.

Is this a sign of something :eek:

purch

Brother can you spare a dime?

vivatifosi wrote: »

Fortuitously, we'd just made a big move into gilts and bonds and weathered the storm considerably better than most as a result. Luck rather than specialist knowledge though.

I moved into Fixed Income slightly earlier in 2008, and I don't call it luck

purch

Brother can you spare a dime?

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley had been and gone by then. So another bank... Not great surprises.

It was a Bank too, but that was where the similarities finished.

sabretoothtigger

ILW wrote: »

To most outside the world of banking, it was of little interest.

Except the dominos type failure where people might not get their wages cleared then it was.
It was an afterthought, oh dam - that affects me ?

purch wrote: »

It was a Bank too, but that was where the similarities finished.

Werent all of them holders of Sub prime. I remember reading the BB news and it was buying USA car debt for some strange reason.
Their CEO had a heart attack, almost all these banks tried and failed to raise funds.
The right issues were all pretty awful, though I guess they did get the money but it wasnt enough.

Somehow only Barc really survived. I read people took money out of BB to put into Barc, somehow Barc has that prestige and it kept them alive meanwhile BB was still making a profit at least day to day

Not on asset worth and all these banks were sunk by assets they held onto - Lehman should have been trading not investing and they screwed themselves over betting big
Again MF global did this too by too much investing not trading, holding onto EURO bonds I think that one was.

So they all made the mistake of overinvesting, all similar in that respect I reckon

purch

Brother can you spare a dime?

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

Except the dominos type failure , oh dam - that affects me ?

If they went bust, the knock on effect on Piaggio, Vespa and Aprilia sales would be huge :eek:

epz_2

I remember

I watched it on news night and cheered but then I am a capitalist and think its just as wrong for state subsidies of banks as it is steel works.

Unfortunately we seem to live in a world where a bank can break a country just as easily as a 70s union could. I am happy to defend what bankers get paid as long as its a fair market (though common sense would explain its currently rigged) but their pensions should be subject to the same risk as their company.