The primary figures in the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy case took a look back at the firm's historic bankruptcy on an ABI media teleconference yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported. Five years ago, Lehman Brothers officials weren’t ready to admit defeat and file what became the biggest bankruptcy filing of all time. As of Saturday, Sept. 13, 2008, “there was no intention on the part of the Lehman management team to think in terms of a bankruptcy of any kind, and there was a certainty in their minds that there was going to be a transaction that would save Lehman,” Lehman’s bankruptcy attorney, Harvey Miller, said. “This was the biggest unplanned bankruptcy in bankruptcy history,” said Bankruptcy Judge James Peck. “The week became an extraordinary improvisation in which lawyers that I ended up seeing in court but that must have been working around the clock…were trying to put together the sale to Barclays, which was ultimately approved at the end of that week,” Judge Peck recalled.
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To listen to the ABI media teleconference examining Lehman's chapter 11 and the lessons learned since the filing, please go to http://news.abi.org/educatonal-brief/lehmans-chapter-11-filing.