Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc.

Thursday, October 24, 1929, easily ranks as the most dramatic day that Wall Street has ever seen. That day witnessed the beginning of the Great Stock Market Crash that over the following few years would result in an almost ninety percent decline in the Dow Jones ­Industrial Average ( DJIA). Although not nearly as dramatic as “ Black Thursday,” ­September 15, 2008, is a date that modern day Wall Street insiders will not soon forget. On that day, one of Wall Street’s iconic investment banking firms, Lehman Brothers, filed for ­bankruptcy. That bankruptcy filing ended the proud history of a firm that had played a major role in shaping the nation’s securities markets and economy for more than a century.

Lehman Brothers had approximately $ 700 billion in assets when it failed, which makes it the largest corporate bankruptcy in U. S. history, easily surpassing the previ-ous headline- grabbing bankruptcies of Enron, General Motors, and WorldCom. By comparison, the telecommunications giant WorldCom, which temporarily held the title of the nation’s largest business failure after collapsing in 2002, had less than one-sixth the total assets claimed by Lehman Brothers.

The shocking announcement that Lehman had filed for bankruptcy caused the DJIA to plunge more than 500 points within a few hours. That large loss was only a harbinger of things to come. Within six months, the DJIA had declined by more than 50 percent from its all- time high of 14,164.53 that it had reached on October 9, 2007. That market decline wiped out nearly ten trillion dollars of “ paper” wealth for stock market investors and plunged the U. S. and world economies into what became known as the Great Recession.

In the spring of 2010, the Lehman bankruptcy once again captured the nation’s attention when the company’s court- appointed bankruptcy examiner released his