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LONDON: The administrators to the European arm of Lehman Brothers have demanded the return of US$8 billion transferred to the bank's US holding company before its collapse, a report said Saturday.
The Financial Times said administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) made the demand in a letter on Wednesday, three days after the bank folded when the US government refused to give its suitors the guarantees they were seeking.
The newspaper said the demand would be welcomed by Lehman's 4,500 staff in London because many were angry that the bank's European operations had no cash in them when the parent company went into bankruptcy.
Tony Lomas, the PwC partner leading the administration, said the fact that more than US$8 billion had been transferred to New York in the days preceding the collapse was not suspicious.
But he said he was "not ruling anything out".
"Clearly the matter requires further inquiry because it is a large sum. But it is simplistic to say US$8 billion was taken from London and put in New York," he told the Financial Times.
"The bank that (Lehman Europe) put its money into was the holding company. Clearly US$8 billion of value has moved from London to New York. It is normal for us to make a claim."
The written demand could be followed by formal legal action to reclaim the funds, although a Lehman source told the paper it was too early to establish whether money transferred from London to New York could be claimed back.
PwC have confirmed that all of Lehman's employees in Britain will be paid their wages for the last month at the end of September.
- AFP/yb
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