Lehman bosses sue failed bank for $100m losses

Robert Lea
13 Oct 2009

Top bankers and traders from the Canary Wharf end of Lehman Brothers are suing the bust US investment house in claims which are set to run to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Six former bosses who helped run Lehmans' European operations are alone claiming more than $100 million (£63.5 million) in compensation.

News of the claims for lost earnings and bonuses comes ahead of the first indications about what sort of bonuses Wall Street might be paying this year amid criticisms that just one year on from the collapse of Lehman, the investment banking community has learnt nothing from the great 2008 banking crisis.

Filings over the insolvency of Lehman Brothers Holdings — which is in administration in the UK with the accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers — reveals the extent to which the bank's rainmakers think they are entitled to compensation.

Several of the claimants — unlike hundreds of their more junior colleagues — were not out of work for long as a result of the crash of Lehman, instead pitching up shortly after at Nomura which acquired certain of the company's European operations.

At the head of the claimant queue is Riccardo Banchetti, the former joint chief executive of Lehmans Europe. The UK-based Italian is claiming $26 million for lost bonus awards and stock options despite being in the job for just a few weeks ahead of Lehmans bankruptcy. Banchetti did not move to Nomura though he did subsequently became the subject of leaked phone calls which indicated that Nomura had considered hiring Banchetti simply for the short term to attract other former employees of Lehman.

The firm's top share dealer David Bizer, co-head of equity sales at Lehman has filed a claim for $21 million in lost deferred remuneration although h was not out of work long after Lehman Brothers failed: within a couple of months he was named Nomura's European head of global markets sales.

It's the same story for Kieran Higgins and Georges Assi, the firm's co-heads of fixed-income, who are understood to have filed claims for $18 million apiece. Within weeks of Lehmans' failure they had been named Nomura's European joint heads of fixed income. Two other UK-based executives at Lehman, Giancarlo Sarrone and Harsh Shah, are according to filings claiming $12 million and $10 million respectively.

Filings also reveal claims from Jeremy Isaacs, Lehmans former European chief executive and Rachid Bouzouba, a former head of equity sales.

Conservative party backer Isaacs left Lehmans before the crash and now runs his own buy-out firm JRJ.

Bouzouba is reckoned to have been hired by Nomura on a contract guaranteeing two years' bonuses. Details of their claims, however, are confidential.

But the claims of the European bankers might end up near the back of the queue. In the US ex-staff claims are led by former global Number Two Joseph Gregory who has put a claim in for $233 million.