The fall of the 5th Wall Street 's Bank

The business bank, Lehman Brothers, still suffers the consequences of the "subprimes crisis" . The share has lost seventy five percent of its value in one week at Wall Street and continues to drop. The priority for Richard Fule (the CEO of the bank) is to forget his will to save the independance of the bank and to find a controlling stockholder.
According to the "Washington Post" and the "Wall Street Journal", the Central Bank conducts negociations with private investors, such as the second american bank , "Bank Of America", ( who is, according to the WSJ, "the white hope" of Lehman Brothers), or the english Barclays. Some hedge funds could be interested in , but this solution could disturb the Federel Reserve (according to the " New York Times").
When the Federal Reserve had organized the takeover of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase, the Central Bank had accepted to finance the operation (30 billions dollars). The candidates of the takeover of Lehman Brothers would like to benefit of the same aid from authorities. However , those are not really willing to do it. Above all after the engagement to pay to safeguard the functioning of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ( 200 billions dollars) .

 15th September 2008 :      Finally, after the decision of the Barclays and the Bank Of America ( who has announced today his take over of  the business bank Merryl Lynch for 50 billions dollars) to don't takeover Lehman Brothers, the 5th Wall Street's Bank becomes bankruptcy. Today , the world of finance is shell-shocked (CAC 40 : -3.78% , FSTE 100 : -3.92%, Dow Jones : -2.92%).

Links :

This link describes the stages of the Subprimes Crisis' developement until the 15th September (FRENCH)

CLICK HERE

This one represents a list of the principal banks who suffered of the Subprimes Crisis (French)

CLICK HERE