Buffett was surprised that Lehman had prepared a draft letter announcing the deal, because he never got close to a deal with Lehman (speravano di farlo fesso
). Fuld and Buffett spoke on Friday, March 28, 2008. They discussed Buffett investing at least $2 billion in Lehman.
Two items immediately concerned Buffett during his conversation with Fuld. First,
Buffett wanted Lehman executives to buy under the same terms as Buffett. (questa per nonno Warren è determinante) Fuld explained to the Examiner that he was reluctant to require a significant buy‐in from Lehman executives, because they already received much of their compensation in stock. However,
Buffett took it as a negative that Fuld suggested that Lehman executives were not willing to participate in a significant way. (infatti...)
Second, Buffett did not like that Fuld complained about short sellers.
On Saturday, March 29, 2008,
Buffett learned of a $100 million problem in Japan that Fuld had not mentioned during their discussions, (ma veramente pensavano di farlo fesso?
) and Buffett was concerned that Fuld had not been forthcoming about the issue. The problems Buffett saw in the 10‐K along with Fuld’s failure to alert Buffett to the issue in Japan cemented Buffett’s decision not to invest in Lehman.
At some point in their conversations,
Fuld and Buffett also discovered that there had been a miscommunication about the conversion price. Buffett was interested only in convertible preferred shares. Buffett told Fuld that he was willing to agree to a
$40 conversion price per share, while Fuld thought Buffett was offering to buy in at “up‐40,” or 40% above the current market price, which would have been about
$56 (sicuramente Warren si dimentica un 40% per strada in questo modo
) per share. On Friday, March 28, 2008, Lehman’s stock closed at $37.87. Fuld spoke to Lehman’s Executive Committee and several Board members about his conversations with Buffett. Lehman recognized that an investment by Buffett would provide a “stamp of approval.” However, Lehman already had better offers for its April capital raise, and Lehman did not think it could give a better deal to Buffett at the same time it gave a less attractive deal to others. On Monday, March 31, 2008, before Buffett could tell Fuld that he was not interested, Fuld called Buffett to say that Lehman could not accept his terms.
p. 709: Lehman’s management had scheduled a Board meeting for noon on Sunday, September 14, 2008 ... Fuld asked Paulson to ask President Bush to call Brown, but Paulson said he was working on other ideas. From that, Fuld inferred that Paulson was going to call Buffett (se lo sognava pure la notte
), although Paulson never mentioned Buffett’s name.
The Role of David Einhorn Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn is also mentioned in the report. Here are the excerpts:
p. 205-206: ...David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, who at the time held short positions in Lehman, stated in an April 8, 2008 speech: "There is good reason to question Lehman’s fair value calculations. . . . Lehman could have taken many billions more in write‐downs than it did. Lehman had large exposure to commercial real estate. . . .
Lehman does not provide enough transparency for us to even hazard a guess as to how they have accounted for these items.