Part II United Kingdom, 6 How Has English Law Coped with the Lehman Collapse?

Subject(s):

Banks and cross-border issues — Bank resolution and insolvency — Bank supervision — Derivatives

The insolvent collapse of the Lehman Brothers group imposed unprecedented strains on the legal and regulatory systems of all the countries where its main business was based. This chapter’s author lived, during a period spanning 2009–2012, in the eye of this storm (in the respect that it has affected England). The author was the judge in charge, at least of the case management, since early on in the litigation following the collapse of the numerous applications for directions made by the administrators of Lehman Brothers International Europe (LBIE), the main hub company for Lehman group business in Europe, and one of the group’s three main trading companies worldwide. He was the first instance trial judge for all those applications, except the first, which was dealt with (to the complete satisfaction of the Court of Appeal) by Mr Justice Blackburne before his retirement. The amounts at stake were, by comparison with anything in which a lawyer is ordinarily involved, on the bench or at the bar, truly astonishing.