The Supreme Court in the U.S. has allowed Barclays to claim about $4 billion of disputed assets as part of its buyout of Lehman Brothers Holdings’ brokerage unit during 2008 financial crisis. The court declined to hear an appeal filed by Lehman Brothers’ creditors, which meant the August 2014 ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York in favour of Barclays remained intact. Barclays already had control of $3.5 billion of the disputed $4 billion. Barclays won court approval to buy much of Lehman’s brokerage business at a September 2008 hearing overseen by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Peck in Manhattan. A dispute remained, however, over how to dispose of various ‘cash’ assets of the brokerage. These included the $4 billion of margin assets held by third parties to support a Lehman exchange-traded derivatives business.
