Lehman's Bankruptcy Tally

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a final (hopefully) estimate of the cost of the Lehman Brother's 2008 bankruptcy filing and the numbers are staggering. Compensation and benefit costs amounted to $1.97 billion, professional and consulting fees were $2.56 billion, and other operating expenses were $1.37 billion, for a total of $5.9 billion! This does not include the $1.36 billion paid out for the Security Investors Protection Act (SIPA)claims. While the bankruptcy costs (excluding SIPA claims) were about $6 billion, the number appears to be in line with other bankruptcies. Research indicates that bankruptcy costs are generally 1.4% to 3.4% of a company's pre-bankruptcy value. For Lehman, which had $300 billion in assets, bankruptcy costs were about 2% of assets.