A Take Private in Lehman’s Future

So it’s been two months since I posted about a possible Lehman Brothers buyout and it’s looking like a less strange solution with each passing uncertain day for the firm. In July Lehman’s market value was about $17 billion, too seemingly large a deal to get done under current credit conditions.  Flash forward to the halfway point of trading today and the firm’s market value is about $3 billion, i.e. doable.  This has many talking about the possibility of Lehman going private.  Lehman’s employees have traditionally been large holders of the companies’ shares and they can’t be happy as they’ve seen the firm’s market value drop substantially (over 90% this year) and they won’t want to see their shares bought on the cheap by somebody else.  Plus, nobody wants to see Paulson’s bazooka if we don’t have to.  Let their be a private solution!