WASHINGTON, D.C. – December 2, 2008 – The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which maintains a special reserve fund authorized by Congress to help investors at failed brokerage firms, said that an estimated 925,000 claims forms have been mailed today to customers and creditors of Lehman Brothers Inc. (LBI).
The claims forms and related documents are also available online at http://www.lehmantrustee.com and on the SIPC Web site at http://www.sipc.org/cases-and-claims/open-cases/lehman-brothers-inc.
In making the announcement, SIPC stressed that all claims must be filed with the court-appointed trustee, James W. Giddens, who is overseeing the LBI liquidation process.
Through the coordinated efforts of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, the trustee and his staff, former Lehman Brothers Inc. personnel, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Depository Trust Clearing Corporation, over 135,000 former LBI customer accounts already have been transferred either to Neuberger Berman (through its clearing firm, Broadridge) or to Barclays Capital.
This transfer of customer accounts in a liquidation proceeding of unprecedented size has been handled in record time, according to SIPC. The procedures being followed in the account transfer process and liquidation of LBI reflect the safeguards provided by the securities laws and the Securities Investor Protection Act (SIPA) in protecting customer assets.
The Bankruptcy Court proceeding for LBI is being conducted under the auspices of United States Bankruptcy Judge James M. Peck.