Lehman: Still Ready to Lend Megabucks

I'm back from holiday, and it seems there's a 218-page report I Really Ought To Read. Do I hafta? In the meantime, I note that Lehman's hitting the markets up for cash. Obviously Lehman, like all investment banks, reckons that now's a good time to have excess liquidity. Which is why I was fascinated to find this in my daily email from Latin Finance yesterday:

Brazilian miner Vale, which last week halted talks with Xstrata for an up to $90bn takeover of the Swiss company, managed to secure a total of $71bn in commitments from banks to support the transaction if it had gone through, says a banker on the deal. The staggering figure, unprecedented in LatAm, highlights the fact that top quality corporates with strong relationships in hot sectors still have ready access to a lot of cash, albeit at higher prices. Santander, Calyon and HSBC committed the biggest tickets, of $7.3bn each, while BNP, Citi, Credit Suisse, Calyon, HSBC, RBS and Lehman took lead manager tickets of $5bn and up.

Lehman sticks out like a sore thumb here: everyone else is a commercial bank whose business is lending money. Lehman, the sole pure investment bank on the list, really has no business promising $5 billion to Brazilian miners, especially at interest rates which might well be lower than Lehman's own cost of funds right now. If I was Lehman CFO Erin Callan, I'd be breathing a huge sigh of relief right now that the Vale-Xstrata deal has fallen through and I don't need to write that $5 billion check, even if it did come with hefty advisory fees attached.

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