Citigroup Inc. and Lehman Brothers International Europe reached a settlement over assets valued at more than $2.5 billion that were held for the collapsed investment bank by Citigroup in a number of countries.
Citigroup agreed to immediately begin transferring assets held in custody for Lehman Brothers, which it kept while determining how it was affected by Lehman's collapse, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Lehman's U.K. administrator, said in a statement. Both parties will drop all claims against each other, PwC said.
"This is by far the largest single deal we have undertaken, and easily the most complex to negotiate and then structure, given the sheer scale of the legacy relationship between Citigroup and LBIE," Paul Copley, a PwC restructuring partner who led the negotiations, said in the statement.
Before going into administration, LBIE and Citigroup, of New York, entered into "a large volume" of agreements related to over-the-counter derivatives, stock lending, repurchase transactions, prime brokerage and trading arrangements, both on behalf of the banks and for third parties, LBIE said.