Barclays Vultures Lehman Scraps

Barclays could end up with the beginnings of an investment banking unit in Brazil if it succeeds in acquiring parts of Lehman. Reuters reports late Tuesday that Barclays has agreed to buy Lehman’s main investment banking assets for about $2bn, citing an unnamed source. According to the Wall Street Journal, Barcap wants to acquire the equity and debt underwriting, M&A and securities trading units. It is unclear what the deal would involve, but Brazil-based bankers speculate that Barclays might establish a local beachhead via an acquisition. Lehman had begun building a structured products team focused on Brazilian fixed income, and it was slowly establishing a name in Sao Paulo, where it opened an office in 2007. The US bank hired Alex Maya, formerly of Morgan Stanley, and Rio Bravo’s founder – veteran senior banker Winston Fritsch – to head the new branch. It was working on adding cross border M&A and financing went the head office went belly up. Barclays meanwhile had been hoping that an acquisition of ABN AMRO – which failed – would beef up its local LatAm investment banking capabilities. Barcap declined to comment.