Lehman E-Mails That Say 'Stupid' Didn't Stay 'Just Between Us'

[Bozita]

Lehman E-Mails That Say 'Stupid' Didn't Stay 'Just Between Us'
Thursday, June 10, 2010


June 11 (Bloomberg) -- "Just between us," it may be "stupid" to use certain words in e-mail to "discuss" the "big trouble" you might face if you're ever investigated for financial wrongdoing or a subsequent cover-up.

Those are some of the terms that examiner Anton R. Valukas searched for in 34 million pages of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. e-mails and reports, to find out who knew what about the risks that drove the fourth-largest securities firm into bankruptcy, according to his 2,200-page study on the collapse.

Valukas concluded that former Chief Executive Officer Richard "Dick" Fuld certified misleading financial statements. Valukas also said former Lehman Chief Financial Officers Christopher O'Meara, Erin Callan and Ian Lowitt didn't disclose a financing method called Repo 105 that hid as much as $50 billion of Lehman's debt as its credit dried up.

"What investigators are looking for is any turn of phrase that can give them insight into what people were thinking at that time," said Peter Henning, a former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer who teaches at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit. "That can be valuable because e-mails are real-time and often unfiltered and can help to establish intent."

At least three lawsuits using Valukas's findings have been filed against Fuld, 64, and other Lehman executives, who asked a federal judge in Manhattan on June 4 to dismiss a class-action suit over Repo 105, saying balance sheet variations were disclosed.

Search Terms

Fuld's lawyer, Patricia Hynes, has said he didn't know about Repo 105. Robert Cleary, Callan's lawyer, has said she served Lehman diligently. They didn't respond to e-mails seeking further comment about Valukas's searches. Kelly Hnatt, a lawyer for Lowitt, and Michael Chepiga, a lawyer who represents O'Meara, declined to comment immediately. Lehman CEO Bryan Marsal didn't immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment on the searches.

The search terms came out of a session where 20 lawyers at Valukas's firm, Chicago-based Jenner & Block LLP, were "told to sit down and be as imaginative as you can," said Robert Byman, a partner at the firm who helped with work on Lehman. The terms were changed if searches produced too many hits, he said.

E-mails searched by the examiner, a former federal prosecutor, show what life was like at New York-based Lehman as employees struggled to manage $613 billion of debt that eventually doomed the company in September 2008. Lehman has said it may spend another five years selling assets to pay unsecured creditors as little as 14.7 cents on the dollar.

Rising Risks

Valukas, 67, whose key terms included "risk," "concern," "breach," "big trouble" and "too late," said Fuld was warned about rising business risks in early 2007, yet encouraged risk-taking until the next year. A March 2007 e-mail Fuld got from Michael Gelband, Lehman's former head of capital markets, cites forecasts of a slowing economy by top money managers Stanley F. Druckenmiller of Duquesne Capital Management LLC and Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor Investment Corp.

"This is not the B-team," Gelband wrote. "I heard your view at the risk meeting that odds are in your favor but risk/reward is not good here so I'm trying to get out of as much illiquid risk as possible."

"Thanks for the update -- let's talk tonite -- I am out now," Fuld replied.

The CEO kept pushing for growth as Lehman neared its risk limits, said Valukas, citing an April 18, 2007, e-mail to Lowitt and others from Kentaro Umezaki, a former head of fixed income strategy for Lehman.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/06/10/bloomberg1376-L3TT1H1A74E9-4.DTL#ixzz0qWNT6hWa

[Demeter]

1. Oh, Yes!! Hang 'Em High! This Just Gets Better and Better

and then start on Goldman

[BluePatriot21]

2. Criminal ceo's

Can we use them as the next "Junk Shot" to try and plug the pipe spewing oil in the gulf of mexico? Take about 10 of these financial criminals and shoot them into the pipe like Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.