The official winding down Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s brokerage business says he plans to return more than $4 billion in cash to former employees and other creditors, the Wall Street Journal reported today. James W. Giddens, the court-appointed trustee winding down Lehman's broker-dealer, said yesterday that now that he has made whole the failed brokerage's customers, he can turn his full attention to creditors. "With the return of 100 percent of customers' assets, we are now able to lay out a clear plan for winding down the general estate and distributing assets to general creditors as quickly as possible," Giddens said. The distinction between "customer" and "creditor" is a crucial one in the Lehman case. Individual customers of the U.S. brokerage, which was under the purview of the bankruptcy court but not technically in bankruptcy like Lehman's parent, received all $92.3 billion they were owed almost immediately after Lehman's bankruptcy. But general creditors of Lehman's brokerage are set to recover much less.
