Actually Lehman has sold the building. Lehman’s US broker/dealer operations were sold to Barclays for USD 1.75 billion, which seems like a good amount of dough till you read the specifics. Barclays will spend USD 1.5 billion for the Lehman headquarters in Times Square and 2 data centers and the rest – USD 250 million for the operations, people, brand, etc…So all the talk about how a companies most valuable asset goes down the elevator every day is all BS. In this case, the actual elevator and building are worth more then the employees.
In India Lehman Brothers is looking to windup operations at every level. What forced Lehman Brothers to file for bankrupty was their Real Estate portfolio. Sundaram Rajagopal was the Managing Director of the Real Estate portfolio for Lehman India. In India they were very aggressive in getting deals done, they had two portfolios: the PE Real Estate fund and their own prop book. It seems the prop book is going to see some serious unwinding (read – liquidation) which will add more pressure to property prices in India.
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