Lehman creditors committee asks court to unseal sale documents

By Caroline Salls

Pittsburgh, Sept. 24 - Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc.'s official committee of unsecured creditors asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York to unseal confidential information related to the company's 2008 asset sale, according to a Thursday court filing.

According to the motion, given the speed with which the asset sale was completed, the committee did not have enough information to make an informed decision whether to extend its support.

As a result, the committee said it continued investigating the specifics of the sale after the transaction closed.

However, in July the court ruled that all confidential and highly confidential discovery materials were to be filed under seal and kept confidential until further court order.

The committee said keeping the information under seal harms both Lehman's creditors and the public at large.

Specifically, the committee is asking the court to unseal redacted portions of its motion for relief from the Sept. 20, 2008 sale order, the company's Sept. 15 motion to modify the sale order and a trustee motion related to the sale order.

As previously reported, Lehman asked the court in the Sept. 15 motion to modify the original asset sale order after the company found that purchaser Barclays Capital Inc. received $8.2 billion more than it should have under the sale.

Lehman said court-approved discovery has uncovered the fact that material components of the sale transaction were not revealed to the court at the sale hearing and that the final transaction differed from the one described to the court.

The committee said information about the amount of additional assets it believes was transferred to the buyer without court approval is not sensitive and is not entitled to protection.

The committee also said a majority of the confidential information was derived from the testimony of former Lehman employees who were discussing actions they took while they were working for Lehman.

"Barclays simply does not have the right to limit public access to information that belongs to the Lehman sellers' estates," the committee said in the motion.

"Even if the redacted information rose to the level of commercial information, the majority of that commercial information belongs to the Lehman sellers - not Barclays."

A hearing is scheduled for Oct. 15.

New York-based Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States. The company filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008. Its Chapter 11 case number is 08-13555.

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