ec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sold half of its investment-management division for about $1.2 billion in stock, according to two people familiar with the deal who declined to be identified.

Executives of Neuberger Berman, the best-known part of the division, will pay $813.8 million in new preferred shares, plus common stock representing a 49 percent stake in the business, New York-based Lehman said yesterday in a court filing. The Neuberger managers will own the remaining 51 percent.

Analysts valued the money-management division at as much as $7 billion earlier this year, before market declines eroded its assets. The all-stock deal adds uncertainty for Lehman creditors who are waiting to be paid from sales of depreciating assets.

“When a debtor’s assets are sold for stock for which there is not a liquid market, there’s more uncertainty about the value,” said Martin Bienenstock, who heads the restructuring group at the law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf. “The value of creditors’ claims is further depressed due to the uncertainty.”

Lehman filed the biggest U.S. bankruptcy on Sept. 15, with $613 billion in liabilities. Its New York headquarters accounted for most of the $1.54 billion the company received from Barclays Plc for its North American brokerage. Lehman said this week it would sell its French investment bank to a unit of Tokyo-based Nomura Holdings Inc. for 1 euro ($1.30).

The Neuberger group, including Lehman executive George Walker, beat a bid of $2.15 billion for the whole division by private-equity firms Bain Capital LLC and Hellman & Friedman LLC because of the greater certainty of its offer, Walker said last week. Neuberger Berman traces its roots back to 1939.

Carlyle Group

Carlyle Group, the world’s second-biggest private-equity firm behind Blackstone Group LP, weighed a bid with former Neuberger Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Lane, though it didn’t make an offer.

The Lehman division’s value eroded as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost about a quarter of its value between the announcement of Bain and Hellman’s bid in September and the deadline for competing offers. Assets were about $160 billion as of Nov. 30.

Bain and Hellman had the right to walk away from the deal if the S&P had an average closing price of less than 902 in the 10 days before the deal closed. The index’s closing price has topped that level just once since Nov. 13

Δμοσιεύθηκε στις 11/12/2008