For the second time in a days, couple of days, buying a U.S. securities firm has been deemed a "once in a lifetime opportunity". First it was Bank of America's Ken Lewis snatching up Merrill Lynch. Now it's Barclays Bob Diamond buying up the U.S. assets -- sans any of those nasty toxic liabilities -- of Lehman Brothers, freshly in bankrupty, for $1.75 billion.
<p><p><p>HTML clipboard</p></p></p> The London-based bank is paying $250 million in cash for the Lehman businesses and $1.5 billion for the securities firm's New York headquarters and two data centers, it said in a statement on its Web site today. The operations employ about 10,000 people, almost two-fifths of Lehman's total.
Barclays President Robert Diamond seized on what he called a ``once in a lifetime opportunity'' to buy a business that ranks seventh in advising on U.S. mergers. The price is on par with the market value of Sanders Morris Harris Group Inc., a Houston, Texas-based brokerage with 617 workers, and is less than a third of the value of KBW Inc., a New York-based firm that employs 529.
Barclays to Buy Lehman U.S. Units for $1.75 Billion - Bloomberg
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