but none of these was able to close a deal. Many people thought that Lehman was too big to fail and that the US government would have to bail it out if no purchaser could be found. This proved not to be the case.
How did this happen? It was a combinations of high leverage risk investments and liquidity problems. Commercial banks that take deposits are subject to regulations on the amount of capital they must keep. Lehman was an investment bank and not subject to these regulations. By 2007 its leverage ratio had increased to 31:1 which means that a 3-4% decline in the value of its assets would wipe out its capital. Dick Fuld Lehman's . Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, encouraged an aggressive deal making culture. He is reported to have told his executives." Every day is a battle." "You have to kill the enemy." The Chief,: Risk , Officer at Lehman was competent; but did not have much influence and was even removed from the executive committee in 2007 . The risks taken by Lehman included large positions in the instruments created from subprime mortgages which will be described in Chapter8 Lehman funded much of its operations with short term debt . When there was a loss of confidence in the company , lenders refused to roll over this funding , forcing it into bankruptcy.
Lehman was very active in the counter derivatives markets. It had hundreds of thousands of transactions outstanding with about 8,000 different, counterparties .Lehman's counterparties were often required to post collateral and this collateral had in many cases been used by Lehman for various purposes. It is easy to see that sorting out, who owes what to whom in this type of situation is a nightmare