Lehman Brothers
Impact
Global markets lost $10T in weeks
What happened
Lehman filed for Chapter 11 at 1:45 am Eastern with $639 billion in assets. By the time Asian markets opened a few hours later, every major trading desk in the world had read the filing in full, knew the counterparty exposures, and had started repositioning. The synchronized global response is the part that was new: it was the first major bank failure of the genuine internet era, and the speed of information reset what a banking panic could look like.
Context
Lehman filed at 1:45am. By 6am every trading desk globally knew the details through internet coverage.
Era
04 · Internet & Early Social
Message boards, blogs, early Twitter democratized financial commentary. Anyone with an audience could move a market. The pump-and-dump went digital.
Read the full era →Also see across timelines
Other events in this era
← Earlier in era
Netscape IPO
Later in era →
Flash Crash