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Lehman Creditors Want Barclays Data From U.K.’s FSA (Update2)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=avQQ6VO1iT5k

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. creditors want the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority and PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd. to turn over information about Barclays Plc and the bank’s purchase of Lehman’s North American brokerage business last year.

The official committee of Lehman’s unsecured creditors asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Peck to seek “judicial assistance” from the U.K. High Court of Justice to get the documents. Lehman’s creditors claim Barclays got a $5 billion discount when it bought Lehman and are seeking to recover assets.

Earlier this month, Lehman and James Giddens, the trustee liquidating Lehman’s brokerage on behalf of the U.S. Securities Investor Protection Corp., sued Barclays in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, seeking the return of what they said was a $5 billion windfall.

The Lehman executives who negotiated the deal on its behalf, and were in line to receive job offers from Barclays once the deal was complete, knew the deal had a built-in discount, the company has said.

The creditors committee has received hundreds of thousands of pages of documents from Barclays and deposed more than two dozen executives, said Michael O’Looney, a bank spokesman.

‘Generate Publicity’

“This effort to take discovery from parties in the U.K. is another attempt by the creditor’s committee to generate publicity,” O’Looney said in an e-mailed statement.

“Last September, at a time of maximum stress on the global financial system, Barclays, the only bidder willing to come forward, purchased Lehman Brothers North American assets,” O’Looney said. “Now that the market has stabilized, the creditors are trying to get a better deal.”

Lehman filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history on Sept. 15, 2008, with assets of $639 billion.

The case is In re Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., 08-13555, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Scinta in New York at [e-mail].