Lehman Bros Holdings Inc

Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. said Thursday it would eliminate 1,300 mortgage jobs in its fourth round of cuts resulting from the collapse of the mortgage market. The company said its Aurora Loan Services unit would close three offices, including an Orange County office in Lake Forest. The other offices to be closed are in Florida and New Jersey. The company gave no breakdown of the job losses.

Morgan Stanley and Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. will slash about 1,140 jobs as the worst U.S. housing slump in 26 years drags down economic growth along with their profit outlook, according to people familiar with the firms' plans. Morgan Stanley's cuts will affect asset management, retail brokerage and support areas such as technology and administration, one of the people said.

For the last six months, Erin Callan was the public face of Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc., making frequent TV appearances to defend the firm against critics who said it was in financial trouble. On Thursday, Callan was the one in trouble, removed as finance chief three days after Lehman disclosed huge losses stemming from the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Lehman also dumped longtime executive Joseph Gregory as president and chief operating officer.

Shares of OfficeMax Inc. plunged the most in almost 21 years Friday after the office supplies retailer said debt that was partially guaranteed by Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. was in default. OfficeMax shares fell $2.12, or 16%, to $11.11, the biggest one-day decline since October 1987. OfficeMax issued $1.47 billion in notes in 2004 in a transaction designed to defer taxes on the sale of timberlands, Christopher Horvers, an analyst at JPMorgan Securities Inc. in New York, said in a research note.

Kathy Fuld, the art-collecting wife of Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Richard Fuld, is selling a $20-million set of rare Abstract Expressionist drawings at a November auction, according to two art dealers. Christie's International, which is offering the works in New York on Nov. 12, declined to reveal the seller's identity. The auction house announced the sale of the drawings, including three by Willem de Kooning, four days after Lehman filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S.

Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. on Monday agreed to sell its investment management business to a pair of private-equity firms, fetching $2.15 billion as the bankrupt investment bank continues its liquidation. Bain Capital Partners and Hellman & Friedman, two of the nation's biggest buyout firms, will take over Lehman's operations in fixed-income and alternative asset management.

The Walt Disney Co. on Monday joined a growing number of Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. creditors to demand an investigation into the actions of the bank's officers and directors in the days before its collapse. In a filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the Burbank entertainment giant said that the conduct of the investment bank after its Sept. 15 bankruptcy filing "gives rise to many important questions" about what happened to the bank's cash and the conduct of its independent officers and directors.

San Mateo County sued Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. executives after losing $150 million when the securities firm collapsed in the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history. The county, just south of San Francisco, held Lehman debt in its investment pool, which handles short-term investments for cities and schools.

It's time to pick up the pieces after the four-month rout in the riskiest sub-prime mortgage-backed bonds, a big Wall Street investment bank told clients over the weekend. But that failed to stop the decline in securities indexes tied to the high-risk mortgages Monday. Shares of many sub-prime lenders also continued to fall. Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. said clients that had bet on rising sub-prime loan defaults and plunging prices for bonds backed by the loans should book their profit.

Real estate investment trust Archstone-Smith said Tuesday that it had agreed to be acquired by Tishman Speyer and investment bank Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. in a deal valued at $13.5 billion, reflecting the strong demand for high-end real estate by private investors. Englewood, Colo.-based Archstone, the No. 2 U.S.