NYT: Findings on Lehman Take Even Experts by Surprise

[babylonsister]

Findings on Lehman Take Even Experts by Surprise
By MICHAEL J. de la MERCED
Published: March 12, 2010


For the year that it took the court-appointed examiner to complete his report on the demise of Lehman Brothers, officials from Wall Street to Washington were anticipating it as the definitive account of the largest bankruptcy in American history.

And the report did just that when it was unveiled on Thursday, riveting readers with the exhaustive detail contained in its nine volumes and 2,200 pages. Yet almost immediately, it raised a host of new questions.

Now government regulators have what some lawyers call a road map for further inquiry into former Lehman executives like Richard S. Fuld Jr. and the auditing firm Ernst & Young.

Whether the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission will actually pursue their own legal actions is unclear. But legal experts said on Friday that the examiner, Anton R. Valukas, had provided plenty of material for civil regulatory action at the least with his findings of “materially misleading” accounting and “actionable balance sheet manipulation.”

“It’s certainly not helpful to any of them,” Michael J. Missal, a partner at the law firm K&L Gates and the examiner in the bankruptcy case of New Century Financial, said of some individuals accused of impropriety in the report. “It certainly assists private litigants and probably increases the pressure on the government to take some kind of action here.”

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/business/13lehman.html

[rucky]

1. Wow, not one mention of Tim Geithner.

more crack reporting from the NYT

[rfranklin]

2. That's old news...let's look closer at what Goldman Sachs and...

the other "banks" are up to right now.

It's astounding how dumb the "experts" can be. They didn't know that these guys were crooks?

They are all using Enron style accounting. Which is why they want to keep the credit default swaps unregulated.

[Vinnie From Indy]

4. In some respects you are absolutely correct

I have always believed that Lehman was done in by Goldman when it could have been saved. Now that Lehman's portfolio has been acquired by Goldman and others, why not throw them the rest of the way under the bus? The folks on Wall Street are masters at deception, distraction and intrique. I believe that some on Wall Street know tha the furor will never die down over the last decades financial debacles until there are some perp walks. The guys at Goldman will happily throw the Lehman executives to the wolves to obscure their ONGOING dubious enterprises.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Ther eally fun part is that Ernst and Young

have these clients:
( You don't suppose they overlooked anything, do you?)

(partial list)

** Financial Services:
State Street Corporation, 3i, Aviva, Aon Corporation, AEGON,
Rabobank, ICBC, ING Group, Piper Jaffray, CIBC, Manulife, Man Group,
VTB, TD, UBS, US Bank, SunTrust Bank, Regions Financial Corporation,
National Australia Bank, AMP Ltd, Babcock and Brown, Key Bank,
Chubb Corporation, Renaissance Capital, Bank of Cyprus, Capital One,
Comerica Incorporated, Delta Lloyd, KBC, Lehman Brothers

** Government:
United States Postal Service, Internal Revenue Service,
United States Department of Veterans Affairs,
United States Department of Justice,
National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
United States Department of Health and Human Services,
United States Department of the Treasury,
Royal Mail, Department of Immigration and Citizenship,
Royal Australian Mint