Lehman Brothers Financial Crisis Case Study

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By turning home mortgages into securitised bonds shadow banks used the CDOs as collateral in their repos. It was these mortgage based CDOs that caused the financial crisis, as the banks realised that this was a very profitable operation. Furthermore investors wanted to invest in a seemingly safe venture. Shadow banks then bought more mortgages and created bonds until they started to sell sub-prime mortgages as there were no alternative options with the desired level of security available. Soon these sub-prime homeowners began to default on their mortgages and so the shadow banks claimed their houses and less money went towards the bond. This trend continued until there were a saturation of foreclosed houses on the market forcing the house prices to drop. Now, even prime mortgage owners have started to default on their mortgages as their house values have decreased to well below their mortgage value. The CDOs are now worthless as there are no mortgage payments going into the CDO leading the investor to pull away from them. The shadow banks now have a useless CDO that they had purchased using a large amount of borrowed capital. Consequently, this capital will need to …show more content…

This lead to the interbank market failing and getting to the point of almost collapsing, and creating a worldwide panic that spread far beyond the financial sector and brought lending to a standstill. It has been said that “the financial calendar can be divided into Before Lehman and After Lehman” (Farndale, 2008). Before the collapse of Lehman Brothers the financial crisis was not fully taken seriously and was believed to just be a passing downturn and not an outright problem. In contrast to this there was definite tension and all-round alarm after the fall of Lehman Brothers, as it was such a large corporation business, and people feared that no one was safe in this

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