Reckoning

This massive weekend meeting on Wall Street concerning the fate of Lehman Brothers must have been intensely gripping - the Masters Of The Universe, humbled. The stuff of movies!:

One person in the Fed meetings Saturday night described them as "the world's biggest game of poker."

With different doomsday scenarios being batted around the meeting rooms, some participants felt the government would blink and do a bailout. "This is going to go down to the last second," one participant said.

With Bank of America backing away from a deal, the enormity of a potential bankruptcy filing by Lehman started settling in. Even understanding Lehman's current trading positions was tough. Lehman's roster of interest-rate swaps (a type of derivative investment) ran about two million strong, said one person familiar with the matter.

Overnight, the outlines of possible deals started to crystallize. The idea that Wall Street firms would fund a "bad bank" full of Lehman's problematic assets was dead. Unlike when Wall Street firms stepped in to bail out hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management a decade ago, today's banks are much weaker. Some were loathe to provide support when a rival like Barclays might still buy Lehman.

By Sunday morning, the U.K.'s Barclays looked like the sole potential buyer. That further minimized the chances of a government bailout: If the Bush administration wouldn't help to fund a Wall Street solution, aiding a foreign buyer was even less likely.

...

By the middle of Sunday afternoon, Barclays was out. Its plan -- to buy Lehman's subsidiaries -- was contingent on government support, which wasn't coming.

At a meeting held at the Fed offices, Mr. Paulson, Mr. Geithner and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox addressed a group of about one dozen banking chiefs. Their message was steadfast: They would not put up money to assist in salvaging Lehman. In the meetings with Mr. Paulson were his chief of staff, Jim Wilkinson, and two advisers, Dan Jester and Steve Shafran, both of whom used to work at Goldman Sachs.

Somber Mood

The mood turned somber as it became clear that the group would have to turn its attention to dismantling Lehman in a way that didn't seriously disrupt the financial system. Soon the group began discussing the mechanics of such a plan.

A sense of foreboding descended over the rival bankers. They focused on the fear that drove down shares in Lehman, worried that would now spread to Merrill, another storied name facing losses from mortgage-related holdings, despite the reputation of its wealth-management business.

"I think the government is playing with fire," said a top executive of a big bank.

The worry for Merrill, said people briefed on the conversations, was that as its stock tumbles, its credit rating could change, increasing its cost of borrowing. Faced with rising borrowing costs -- a key expense for giant Wall Street financial firms -- its business might be severely crimped. As well, as concerns mount, its trading partners might stop doing business with it.

Many in the room began to wonder when Merrill would sell itself. "Tonight, or tomorrow?" said one of these people in an interview. In fact, within a few hours, the bankers learned that Merrill was in talks to be acquired by Bank of America.

As word that a Barclays deal was off filtered across Wall Street, traders scrambled to extricate themselves their various financial transactions with Lehman. Traders at many Wall Street firms were told to come to work immediately.

The European Central Bank was also in a state of high alert on Sunday, with employees in divisions from money-market operations to financial stability camped out in the bank's 37-story glass-and-steel tower in Frankfurt, preparing for what Monday might bring. "We are in the hands of the Americans," said one employee.