A 50-cent share in merchant bank Lehman Brothers, whose collapse in September 2008 sparked the world economic and financial crisis, fetched 24,000 euros ($33,000) at an auction in Germany Saturday. The share, issued by the bank on May 31, 1994, used to hang over the manager''s desk at Lehman Brothers and was put up for sale by specialist auction house Historisches Wertpapierhaus at a starting price of 5,000 euros.
Numbered LB0001, the share measuring 30 centimetres by 20 (12 inches by nine) was issued to the bank''s boss at the time, Richard Fuld. It was sold earlier this year in a mixed lot of financial paper in the United States before being offered as a single item to the Wuerzburg-based auctioneers. More than three years after the fall of Lehman Brothers it has not been fully wound up. Creditors owed 370 billion dollars will have to share out just 65 billion in assets recovered by the liquidators.