The word on the street is that there will be a massive realignment of the cost structure in the Lehman Brothers Inc businesses acquired by Barclays Capital last week.  Not only will the cuts in personnel be deep, but it is likely that the compensation paid to the remaining personnel will also be reduced significantly.  I’ve mentioned it previously, but there is little doubt that thousands of professionals and support staff will be receiving their walking papers, consisting of severance agreements which will of course include general release agreements.

 

As background information, Barclays Capital, the investment banking division of Barclays Bank PLC (LSE: BARC), entered into a definitive lehman-bros-barclay-asset-purchase-agreement (link to official SEC filing) to acquire substantially all of the North American businesses and operating assets of Lehman Brothers Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (NYSE: LEH), and certain related assets of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and its affiliates, along with the headquarters of Lehman Brothers in New York City and two data centers located in New Jersey.  In addition for the approximately $1.45 billion for the real estate, the consideration for the deal consisted of assumed liabilities, $250 million in cash and certain contingent considerations.

 

In addition to the link to the actual Lehman Brothers Barclays Capital Asset Purchase Agreement above, I’ll also post links to the various asset purchase agreements from the deal shortly on our agreements and contracts preview site.  If you go to www.RealDealDocs.com, which is used by thousands of legal and business professionals to find agreements and contracts from top law firms and companies to leverage in their research and drafting.  At RealDealDocs, you can see, download and edit thousands of these types of asset purchase agreements and merger agreements, and you can use the best agreement clause search functionality available anywhere to find precisely the agreement provision or clause you need from specific types of agreements.