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By Thomson Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this article.
LONDON -- A year on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the subsequent takeover of the bank's assets is finally coming back to bite Barclays Capital. The trustee of the bank's estate is seeking a re-fund of $8.2 billion or more on the grounds that the British bank landed itself "windfall" because of assets it received that weren't intended to be part of the deal.
Barclays Capital has condemned the claim as "opportunistic", based on a "meritless argument" and an attempt to re-trade a deal after the economy had stabilized once again.
The two sides have almost a month - till Oct. 15- when a hearing is scheduled to take place at the Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York.
James Giddens, the Trustee for Liquidation of Lehman Brothers filed the motion on Tuesday in the New York court, arguing that certain executives at Lehman had agreed to give Barclays a $5 billion discount off the book value of some securities as well as giving them billions extra in added value.
The Barclays ( BCS - news - people ) acquisition of the U.S. assets of Lehman last September- while Europe and Asia went to Nomura Holdings - sent it scaling up the ranking of the U.S. investment banking scene. Barclays Capital's fixed income division was ranked No. 1 in an Institutional Investor annual poll of bond investors earlier this month.
While criticism of Barclays' acquisition of the business is not new to criticism, the sharp criticism implied in the Lehman documents should make for worrying reading for the bank. In the same papers, Lehman is also critical of the bank's stance on bonuses and claims that Barclays had never intended to pay out on some $2 billion in bonuses it had committed to. It also suggests that the decision to sell the assets at such a steep discount may have been "exacerbated" by the fact that some of the executives involved in the offer had lucrative jobs at Barclays at stake. Link...