Lunchtime Links: The Lehman lurch

Yesterday Lehman's stock plummeted 45% to a 10-year low after it was left at the altar by the Koreans. Today, the bank brought forward its Q3 results announcement to reveal a new plan to sell its asset management business and spin off $25-30bn of its real estate 'portfolio' to create an all-new entity to be known henceforth as 'core Lehman Brothers' (MarketWatch). BTW, headcount was down 254 over the last quarter.

Standard & Poor's puts Lehman on credit watch (Bloomberg).

Lehman pens are suddenly a hot collectable (BusinessWeek).

"Goldman Sachs is a willing counterparty to Lehman Brothers across all our businesses" (Bloomberg).

Should the Fed bail out Lehman? Can it? (Wall Street Journal).

HSBC 'highly unlikely' to acquire Lehman (<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aElDt9FGlm8U" target="_blank"Bloomberg).

Lehman appears to have simultaneously pursued all the options at once ... and consummated none of them (Clusterstock).

Lehman aside...

Sterling's slide scuppers union of Tullet and GFI (The Times).

LSE had non-recurring software problems (Telegraph).

Is that man in a hairnet an undercover headhunter? (Wall Street Journal).