On February 29, 2012, the Supreme Court of England and Wales handed down the long-awaited judgment on a number of issues relating to the “client money” status of certain sums held by Lehman Brothers’ UK entity and claims against those sums. The appeal arose in the broader context of the Lehman Brothers administration, but specifically concerned Lehman Brothers International Europe (“LBIE”), the group’s main trading company based in London. The issues at stake in the appeal were the status of money that should have been segregated and held on trust for clients, but was not, the size of the “pool” of client money in which all those with client money claims would share and the extent of those claims themselves.
