Barclays, Nomura Fight for Lehman Assets

The administrator to the European business of bankrupt US investment bank Lehman Brothers, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, was last night locked in negotiations with two rival bidders over the sale of parts of the business.

The first bidder is understood to be Barclays Bank, which has already agreed to buy many of Lehman's US operations and now has its eye on the bank's European equities and investment banking businesses. Barclays is not interested in acquiring other parts of Lehman's European operation, but the two units employ some 3,000 of the 5,000 staff based at the US bank's Canary Wharf headquarters. The sale of a large part of Lehman's European business to Barclays would be convenient given the British bank has already picked up so much of its US operation, a deal that was formally cleared by the US courts on Saturday.