The Cost of Delayed Recovery While the delays in reaching a resolution promoted recovery as asset prices improved, the delays also reduced the value of the amounts recovered. Payments made years after bankruptcy are necessarily worth less than more timely payments because of the time value of money. Moreover, creditors lost the liquidity value of their assets over the resolution period. These costs are particularly high in Lehman’s case since the firm’s time in default is so far about eight times greater than the typical bankruptcy length of fourteen months. Indeed, soon after the bankruptcy filing, some creditors sold their claims to distressed-debt-investing hedge funds.