Barclays Plc. has won as much as $5.5 billion from the liquidator of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s brokerage since buying the defunct investment bank’s North American business more than three years ago, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. A federal judge on Tuesday told the brokerage to pay Barclays what it owed, saying that the final sale documents showed the parties' true intent. Trustee James Giddens originally demanded $7 billion from Barclays, saying that he had not read last-minute changes to the contract in the September 2008 chaos after the Lehman parent filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history. U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest ordered Giddens to pay London-based Barclays $1.1 billion and renounce his claim to $1.5 billion in margin assets backing trading operations that Barclays took over from Lehman. In confirming part of a lower-court decision, Forrest cost Giddens a total of $3.5 billion in margin and $2 billion in clearance-box assets, held to clear trades, the trustee said on Tuesday.
