So by now we all know that over the weekend Barclays declined to do a deal that would salvage Lehman Brothers, mostly because Richard Fuld wanted more money than they thought it was worth. At the time we figured he was being all hubristic. But then today, we found out exactly what Barclays thought it was worth, after the British bank purchased the capital-markets unit for $1.75 billion. And it was worse than we’d imagined.
The deal, which also includes Lehman’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters building and two data centers — accounting for $1.5 billion of the deal’s value — must be approved by a judge overseeing Lehman’s bankruptcy proceedings.
Emphasis ours, because wait, hold up. We are really truly bad at math but does that mean they only paid $250 million for the 8-10,000 employees and the actual, you know, stuff of the operation and the bulk of what they bought is real estate? That’s only 139 million in British pounds, by the way. Dick Fuld probably used to eat breakfasts that cost that much. We can see how that might be a blow to the old ego.
Barclays Reaches $1.75 Billion Deal for a Lehman Unit [NYT]
